Get local news delivered to your inbox!

Books can say a lot about a person. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase even more.

When I married Cheryl, I moved into a home with a floor-to-ceiling living room bookcase stuffed to the gills. I was impressed. What a voracious reader, this woman.

In 2018, we decided to redo the living room. This meant dismantling the towering literary edifice. The books filled 26 boxes. We put them in the garage, crowding Cheryl’s car on two sides.

The redo had many phases. The replacement of a 19th century doorway with a cute window. The installation of a gas fireplace. The retexturing of the walls and ceiling. The laying of new wool carpeting.

We were close to the finish line when COVID struck and the living room got converted into Cheryl’s home office.

Those boxed books in the garage? Largely forgotten.

Recently I did a sly thing in hopes of reviving the project. Without notifying Cheryl, I hauled all 26 boxes onto the porch, creating an eyesore.

But my strategy worked. Cheryl’s builder brother came to Napa for a day. He reworked the bookcase to fit around a window, not a doorway. Our century-old redwood wall is terribly bowed, he groused.

Cheryl made it her job to finish the installation. New shelves needed sanding and staining to look like redwood. She finished after Labor Day.

The next weekend we spent eight hours dusting off spiders and sorting through the contents of the 26 boxes. For reasons that baffled me, we now had way more books that we had shelf space.

Why so many John le Carre spy stories? Did I ever intend to read all of Ray Bradbury? And Tracy Kidder’s “Strength in What Remains.” I got my copy during Kidder mania some years ago, but never read it.

Cheryl looked coldly on Erma Bombeck’s “At Wit’s End” and Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” And just how many do-it-yourself guides do you need to build backyard decks and skylights?

I was charmed by some of my rediscoveries, such as my Inspector Maigret mysteries. I’ll read them again. And “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat Moon – I can’t wait to see America again through his discerning eye. Same with Faulkner and Hemingway.

The real gems in the Courtney collection touched upon my roots. In 1942, a young U.S. Army nurse, Louise A. Courtney of Holly Spring, Mississippi, pasted her nameplate in “The New Book of Etiquette.” She was preparing to be the perfect wife when her husband, my father, came home from war.

Another heirloom, “The Wars of England and Scotland,” printed in 1870 and once owned by J.G. M’Cormack of Pultenytown, Scotland. I’m presuming he was my paternal great-grandfather.

And his presumed daughter, Helena Maud MacCormack Courtney, wrote “To dear Kevin from Gram” inside the cover of “A Book of Famous Explorers,” the 1901 edition. Grammy died 63 years ago. This book, never read, is my only physical connection with her.

Cheryl’s most cherished keeper: “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” – a young girl’s coming of age story that she read over and over in adolescence.

Included in our stash were three copies of James Conaway’s “Napa, The Story of an American Eden.” An important book about the founding of the modern Napa Valley wine industry, for sure, but THREE copies? And I haven’t read a one all the way through.

Ultimately, we donated a trunk-load of books to the Friends of the Napa Library.

The reinstalled bookcase is an impressive thing. Not the Great Library of Alexandria, but unsurpassed for its personal importance. We made sure to leave shelf space for books to come.

Some of these books are my best friends. They are who I once was and who I am now and who I want to become.

Kevin can be reached at kfcourtney@yahoo.com.

Get local news delivered to your inbox!

People like to joke about President Joe Biden's mental health. Napa Register columnist Samie Hartley doesn't think it's funny. Here's why.

Betty continues her series on meditation with James Keolker, a meditation master who provides step-by-step instruction for learning how to meditate.

Books can say a lot about a person. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase even more.

Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.