Rick and Susan Jackson live high on a hill. From their windows you can see all the way from Koko Head to Waikiki. What distinguishes them from their Waialae Nui neighbors is that the panorama vies for the couple’s attention with their collection of 5,000 books.
These days, thanks to reality television shows, not many people will admit to hoarding. But the Jacksons cheerfully own up to being hoarders of books.
"I think my wife and I fit the description. In addition to more than 25 bookcases, all tables/surfaces in our house are also in use," Rick Jackson wrote in response to an email query, adding, "It’s 3-to-1 Susan on the buying."
After welcoming visitors into their home with a smile that lit up her big blue eyes, Susan Jackson addressed her husband. "I don’t buy most of the books," she said in a mock stern tone. "And I don’t know where you came up with that 5,000 figure."
"I counted them," he replied.
"Yours, mine and ours," she said.
Before "hoarder" became a household term, they would have been called bibliophiles or, more aptly, book lovers. They do not seek rare or first editions. Voracious readers since childhood, theirs is an eclectic collection based on one common denominator: love of the written word.
"Books have always been friends," Rick Jackson said.
As a child, he was read to by his father at bedtime and inspired by the example of his mother, who never graduated from high school, but read books every night.
In addition to ocean and sky, the white-carpeted living room displays colorful contemporary paintings and, to one side of the fireplace, an imposing cherry credenza holding leather-bound volumes behind glass doors.
Large art and travel books sit on the brick ledge of the hearth.
"We pick up books wherever we travel. I change these piles by the fireplace when we come back from a trip," said Susan Jackson, 68, a recently retired deputy director of the state Department of Health.
Born in Indianapolis, she worked in health care in Washington, D.C., before moving to Hawaii 27 years ago. She met Rick, 65, who hails from Ohio and directs the third-party health care service MDX Hawaii, while working at Queen’s Health Care Systems. They have been married for 16 years.
Some of Susan Jackson’s books are selections of the mail-order Book-of-the-Month Club, which phased out in 2014. A member of the Smithsonian, she is sent books about museums worldwide.
Membership in a book group has fueled acquisitions for Susan Jackson but not for her husband. "I’m not a joiner," he said.
Their collection merges inherited books, favorites from childhood and textbooks from student days. Mostly, though, they actively seek and buy old and new books online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Locally, they frequent the Jelly’s used bookstore in Aiea.
Regarding e-books, Rick Jackson shook his head. "For me a book is a physical experience. I love opening a new book. The smell."
"And I like the smell of an old book," his wife said.
Before the Internet, one of the couple’s great joys was reading reference books. Rick Jackson patted a hefty blue Columbia Encyclopedia, 1993 edition, that lay open on a lectern in the living room.
Another wall-size bookshelf dominates the dining room. An overstuffed wicker bookshelf commands the kitchen.
"I counted 500 cookbooks," he said. "Susan cooks a lot and she’s really good."
In her study, books fill a comfy armchair facing another wall-size bookcase and sit in baskets on the floor.
"We both tend, when we like authors, to buy and read everything by them," Susan Jackson said, citing Robertson Davies as "one of my all-time favorites" and holding up a new novel, "The Book of Strange New Things," by Michel Faber.
Her husband has "100 percent" of the books written by John le Carre, Stuart Kaminsky, James Lee Burke, Thomas Harris, Lee Child, Joe Gores and many others.
The West was well represented with novels by Wallace Stegner and Ken Kesey. Speaking of Kesey, Rick Jackson said his favorite book by Tom Wolfe is "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," which chronicles Kesey’s cross-country adventures.
Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road," wrapped in a colorful abstract dust cover, was a prize from a used bookstore in Santa Barbara, Calif. Rick Jackson lamented the closing of Long Beach’s Acres of Books, the self-proclaimed largest used bookstore in the world.
"One of my favorites is City Lights in San Francisco," Susan Jackson chimed in.
The only room in the 3,000-square-foot house without books is the guest bedroom. In the couple’s own bedroom, there are five books by her side of the bed and 15 by his, including Paul Theroux’s "Hotel Honolulu."
The visitors had seen about 1,500 books. Now came the moment of truth. Part of any hoard, whether it be the pride of pirate or squirrel, should be stashed in a hollow tree, buried in sand or cached deep in a secret cavern.
The downstairs delivered. A long hallway, lined with shelves holding books stacked on top of books, opened onto a spacious room with several tall bookcases in an arrangement reminiscent of standing stones.
Rick Jackson turned to face his guests. "All these shelves are double-booked," he announced, removing books to reveal the hidden spines behind.
"Holy mackerel!" his wife exclaimed. "Maybe we do have 5,000 after all."
Asked if there were five or fewer titles they could not live without, Rick Jackson named "Broken Trust," by Samuel King and Randall Roth; the Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson; "Eisenhower at War," by David Eisenhower; "The World at Arms, a Global History of World War II," by Gerhard Weinberg; and "Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement," by Henry Clausen and Bruce Lee.
"I worked at the Pentagon after graduation as a political appointee in the Nixon and Ford administrations, so I come by my love of military history and political science from a ‘been there’ perspective,’" he said.
As for Einstein, who could resist the man who said, "It finally occurred to me that time itself was suspect."
Susan Jackson said there were only two books, both long out of print, with which she could never part: "The Body Has a Head," by Gustav Eckstein, and "Van Loon’s Lives," which she’d loved as a child, by Hendrik Willem Van Loon.
"I had to really look for a long time to find him again. He creates dinner parties and meetings with famous people like Descartes and Emerson that never really happened."
It was fun to watch the couple’s eyes brighten and their faces soften when they opened a book. Yes, there was a glint of the pirate’s gloating over this treasure, but unlike the stereotypical hoarder, the Jacksons have made constant use of theirs.
They have read all their books, except for a hundred they are looking forward to reading. And they have parted with quite a few — giving away at least 500 — and will shortly be de-accessioning hundreds, maybe thousands, more.
They’re moving to San Diego. "We will probably have to go to an e-book system or will outgrow our new condo in, I estimate, three years," Rick Jackson said.
The Jacksons plan to have a garage sale and then donate any unsold books to Jelly’s. They used to drop off books at the annual Friends of the Library book sale at McKinley High School but now stay away "because we’d always end up buying more books."
As Emily Dickinson wrote, "There is no frigate like a book/ to take us lands away." The Jacksons’ fleet is a reminder of how easy it is to open two covers and sail away, returning with stores of memories from every time and place.
