I collect boring books, which probably even sounds boring. I assure you it’s not. By “boring books” I don’t mean boring in the sense that an out-of-date psychology textbook or a 900-page history of dairy farming in the Hebrides is boring. Books like those, with their inherently limited readerships, aren’t aiming to be anything other than boring; they wear their boringness on their sleeves. They are obviously boring. What I am after are books that are uniquely, exquisitely, profoundly boring — books whose boringness intrigues, if that is not a contradiction in terms.
It started one afternoon two years ago as I was walking down a stretch of Broadway on the Upper West Side where vendors sell used books off sidewalk tables. My eye was caught (I know this will sound improbable) by a photo of Adlai Stevenson: his vast forehead and purse-lipped semi-smile graced the cover of a collection of his speeches, published during the 1952 presidential campaign. Within me, something stirred. Was it that Stevenson had been the most diffident and least physically prepossessing man ever to serve as a major party’s candidate for president? Or was it simply that, in the moment, I couldn’t imagine a book that anyone in 2010 would possibly want to read less? Either way, I had to own it. And thus began a passion.
My hobby has two rules: I buy books only on the street. (Uniquely boring books must present themselves willingly; you can’t hunt them down.) And the titles must meet a standard of boring intrigue that I have a hard time putting into words, beyond “I know it when I see it.” This is where — if I may shed any pretense of modesty — taste and connoisseurship come into play.