Collected Works

In 2011 Collected Works Bookshop posted was moving from the corner on one street to the corner on the street behind it. Volunteers were requested to help move books from the old store to the new one. I hadn’t heard about it until a friend asked if I was planning to help with the move. “What move?”

“Collected Works is changing location.” I’m going. Should be fun. Want to come?”

“I wasn’t invited,” I said, feeling a too familiar sense of not being informed about something many people already knew. Not being wanted.

“You don’t need to be invited. If you want to help just show up.” 

“Are you sure?”  My answer was an eye roll. 

The day of the move, a warm sunny morning, lots of people arrived, eager to help, laughing at the thought of books being moved by hand, from one location to another, by a collection of people who knew or had just heard about the event. So many people showed up we formed a continuous line, starting from the door of the old store, ending at the door of the new one. Our job was to pass the books from one person to the next until all the books reached the new store.

Do not ask people who read for pleasure, for knowledge, to assuage curiosity, temporarily take their minds off their current lives, who would rather read than watch television, to move books. People like me who as children read as much as we could, as fast as possible, before being called to do chores around the house. 

Booklovers cannot just pass books from one person to the next without looking at the title, opening a few pages, reading a few lines—or more. As people in the line handed books from the person on their right to the person on their left, more than occasionally, some of us would begin reading, stopping the movement of books until a person yelled, “Move it,” and the books would once again begin to move, for a while, until a booklover could not resist peeking at the inside of an irresistibly interesting looking book.

Each time someone yelled, “Move it,” the booklover would reluctantly hand the book to the person on their left, but when you’re moving books it’s almost impossible not to want to take a peek when a title catches your interest. I was among the guilty, unable to resist the lure of an interesting novel. It took the person on my left muttering irritably, “Move it,” to make me stop reading. It wasn’t the first or last time I started reading a book.

I’m sure most of the books had been packed into cartons, labeled, and moved by truck. I don’t know how the books we moved were chosen to be moved by hand. I do know I wished I had had paper and pen to write down titles that interested me—too many to keep in memory.

As the last book passed from our hands, we walked to the new location where we were greeted with tee shirts and congratulations and much laughter. A good time was had by all.

Have you experienced a time when people came together to form a spontaneous community? What was that like?