Notebook: (1) Some Men Reading

Reading in a way that makes people feel like they are a part of something

Pastor Jonathan Everett, novelist Daniel Black, and Dr. Jerid P. Woods at Baldwin & Co. Bookstore in December

Let me explain something, because I just figured this out about myself. People say that a bibliophile is someone who loves books. Cool, respectable, very dictionary.

But what do you call someone who doesn’t just love books, but someone whose walk looks like it was edited by a library? Yeah, that’s different. That’s what I like to call bibliolific living.

You see, I used to collect books, heavy emphasis on used to. Now, I live with them. I work with them.

These aren’t books that just sit on shelves looking cute and unopened. These are books that share oxygen with me. Books that know my moods, books that whisper, Yo, you good? Sit down. We got you. Some people call this a clutter, but me, I call community, because look at my life, I’ve got books everywhere…

You see, at some point, I realized these books aren’t decorated in my space, they’re making me comfortable inside myself. Some folks collect sneakers, some folks collect wine, I collect both, but I also collect sentences that rearrange my spirit. So if a bibliophile loves books then the bibliolific life is when the books love you back.

Yeah, that’s right.

This is Jerid P. Woods, speaking on his Instagram feed, @ablackmanreading.

He was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi, and became a high school teacher in Hattiesburg after a somewhat indifferent stint at the University of Southern Mississippi. In 2018 he started posting online as @ablackmanreading. In one of his early posts, under his sometime nom de plume Akili Nzuri, he explained that he had been drawn to a line from Will Smith who said that “finding one’s purpose was grounded in exploring and experiencing.” “It has been my experience,” he went on, “that exploration has led me to many things, especially books, which have provided me with multiple means of adding others’ experiences to my own … Books have always been a symbol of humanity’s on-going search for themselves as well as a symbol of man’s search for his place relative to the world. Here I will seek to explore and experience through not only books, but music, cigars, politics, and whatever catches my eyes and ears.” In his early posts this project of self-discovery is interwoven with his motivation to help his young students find their way in the world. He cites the same quote from James Baldwin that is a motto of sorts for our current partner bookstore, Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”