BELL CURVE:

I collect books. Mostly I don’t read them; I just collect them. I have several bookcases and a nightstand filled with books that I had every intention of reading when I bought them or put them atop my Christmas lists. I still do. But meanwhile, I’ve embraced other joys and satisfactions besides reading that books supply.

They are a warming presence in my home and office.

When I wake up in the morning, I often spend a few reflective moments just looking at a cluttered bookcase before I admit the stresses of the day into my consciousness. Books invite touch. Fondling a book can be a downright sensual experience that comes alive especially when I’m surrounded by books in a library.

Think, for a moment, when was the last time you got that reaction from fondling a computer.

And books enable me to elbow into conversations at cocktail parties because I’ve read reviews and the summary on the covers of my books before they join the pecking order of books I haven’t read.

There is a certain risk, here, of being exposed by people who have actually read the book being discussed. That happened to me on my first day of teaching at UCI when I used a literary allusion the class knew I was faking and called me on it. In the 21 years of teaching that followed, I stuck to what I knew and didn’t try that again.

I’m reminded of all this by a delightful new book titled, “How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read” and a sudden spate of articles about reading, notably a cover story in Newsweek and the results of a study of the reading habits of Americans by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Newsweek pays homage to books by introducing us to a device called the Kindle. As created and developed by Amazon.com, it looks and behaves like a book — sort of — while performing all sorts of technological marvels for the reader.

The Kindle is clearly an effort to marry the venerable book to the technological world, but after reading about it, I would strongly question whether it might pass either the warming presence or fondling tests. I’m trying to keep an open mind.

As a counterpoint to Amazon’s reincarnation of the book, the NEA quotes an impressive array of figures in concluding that a steadily increasing number of adult Americans are not reading even one book a year.

The numbers in the NEA study are depressing. For example, 72% of high school graduates were seen as “deficient” at writing in English, and money spent on books, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped 14% over the past decade.

To put all this in perspective, I wandered into a little nook off 17th Street in Costa Mesa to find a sign over a storefront modestly called The Book Store. Inside I found books piled so high that getting around had to be plotted.

Presiding over this literary zoo with the same easy comfort that his books project was Brad Wilson, who waved cheerfully at the stacks and said: “This isn’t as disorganized as it looks. I can put my hand on almost every book.”

Wilson surveys the plight of the small book store entrepreneur up against the monoliths led by Barnes & Noble with surprising equanimity, even though he is dubious about how long he can hold out.

The principal threat to his used-book business comes not from the chain book emporiums but from the Internet, where Amazon can offer up — at its own estimate — 100 million titles for sale.

‘I don’t blame the people who use the Internet to buy books,“ he said. “All they have to do is click on the title they want. What used to be rare books are no longer so scarce any more with this technology. Customers can pick brains on the Internet that used to take dealers years to learn.”

So what can he put up against such efficiency?

“Camaraderie,” he said, “and the joy of browsing with a book in your hand. I get to know my customers. I don’t take credit cards, and if a customer comes up short, I just put him on a tab. I have that kind of relations with my customers. We talk about books and lots of other things.”

Like, for example, Wilson’s route to the used book business. He was a former pro golfer who wrote about celebrity golfers in sports magazines and moved from San Diego to Orange County to promote his invention of a device to help ease lower-body pain in the swing of golfers and baseball players.

Although Dodger manager Walt Alston used it on some of his players, it never caught on and is awaiting a new life in Wilson’s garage.

Meanwhile, after several detours, he began picking up valuable books at such places as Goodwill and adding them to his considerable library of golfing books to turn what was once a hobby into the beginnings of a business. He’s been at it, now, for 16 years in Costa Mesa and would like to stay at it awhile longer.

One of his regular customers was the late Chuck Jones, the father of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who told Wilson one day: “Don’t ever leave.”

That’s advice he plans to follow. He would be pleased if it could be accompanied by a resurgence of real books in a society where they are sorely needed.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.