Skip to main content

The glory of books...

I like to read.

I inhale books. When I read books, I am in the story like watching a movie, but it's real in ways that no movie could ever be. I struggle with heroes across barren wastelands and heaving seas. I fight dragons and Nazis and fires. I win women and have children, earn awards and degrees. I visit different planets and worlds and eras, swimming alongside single-celled organisms and whales and icthyosaurs, flying with seed pods as they scuttle across the sky, boiling in the fiery caverns of volcanoes... I have baked pastries, escaped gangsters, fought lawsuits, travelled to the furthest reaches of Rio Negro in the Amazon, rocketed to the moon, and been present at the very beginning and end of the universe itself. I have struggled against crushing poverty and ignorance, felt the lash of the taskmaster's whip, experienced the crushing lack of humanity in a Russian GULAG camp, stoked the fires at Auschwitz. I have felt my soul expand mightily with the great philosophers of past and current eras. I have felt the very hand of God Himself writing on my soul and heart, molding me into the kind of man He would have me become.

When I read, I escape the mundane. I am not of this world any longer. I surrender completely to the whims of the author.

I love everything about reading. The struggle to find a comfortable position. The weight of the book in my hands or resting on my chest. The bite of the cover into the flesh of my palms as I grip it for strength through the intense portions. The smell of mustiness and dust and everyone who has read the book before me (in the case of library books) or of the printing and glue and shipping container (in the case of new books). I think I prefer library books, because I feel like I am sharing the adventure with unknown faces, each of whom have touched these pages and have been touched by them. I see traces of them left on the pages as I turn: maybe finger prints, smudges, bits of food or chocolate, sometimes even blood. Far from being offended, I am touched by these traces of humanity - these people loved this book so much that they couldn't put it down for anything: food, cleaning, even bodily harm were all just distractions from the book. I want to feel and love those whose hands and hearts and souls have warmed the pages of this book.

I love libraries. I love to sit in the library and read. I can feel the spirits of the authors who struggled to put their thoughts down and send them out into the world. I love to watch people in the library - researchers, families looking for that perfect children's book, and other bibliophiles like me, lurking, observing, and loving. I love people who go to the library to read, taking off their shoes, sitting and immersing themselves in their books. These are my people. I wonder what they're reading and where they're going in their books. I like the gentle glances and half-smiles as we rest our eyes before plowing back into the book.

Plowing - that's an appropriate term. Turning over the soil, exposing newness and freshness and allowing new ideas and feelings and worlds to germinate. Because that's the power of books - they take us places that we may not feel comfortable but are irresistible and compelling and soul-enlarging. We can close the book and walk away, but the words are imprinted on our souls forever.

Comments

Jeanette said…
Amen to all of that!
Anonymous said…
I can smell the library books too, as I read your blog. Thanks for the memories. Darrin and I are reading a very old copy of The Hobbit right now, and it smells like everything you described.

Popular posts from this blog

Ephesus

Paul got around. Ephesus is right on the Aegean Sea, on the coast of present-day Turkey. Yesterday he was in Galatia, which was much more towards the middle of Turkey. And when he actually wrote these letters, he was in Rome... So the man could travel. He probably walked. Today's item of interest comes from chapter one in Ephesians. Verses 18 and 19 are particularly interesting: 18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power This is not the first time Paul talks about an inheritance. In Galatians he talks about the inheritance that comes of being part of the Abrahamic Covenant. He notes that we are joint-heirs through and with Christ. In Ephesians, he uses the word "adoption" - that we are adopted as the Children of Jesus Chris...

Engaged

Three Dog Night got it wrong.  One is not the loneliest number. They were more accurate when they said Two can be as bad as one.  I really wonder how people can survive Without being fully engaged. How they live through each day Without the intimacy I so very much crave... Maybe I am unusual in my desire  To have this intimacy, To want to feel that soul So close to my own Sharing light and warmth, Sharing love and passion, Sharing life. Alas! Alas! Alas! For when I do seek to share It is often only to be rebuffed Denied Or used up, Sucked dry, And left an empty husk.  I want SO MUCH to share And all I have is the cold, digital world Of typing out a blog.

The Other Art

I'm not sure we appreciate photography as much as we do other art forms. Part of this comes from the reality that surrounds and permeates a photograph - it's very, very real, and the photographer strives for clarity and crispness in the representations. Perhaps this is why black and white images continue to be relevant - they strip away extraneous information (color) and leave us with something that is at once familiar and also non-existent - for nothing exists in black and white. Nothing. I also think that pictures are becoming too common-place... Everyone has a camera in their pocket, and while that's a very democratic thing (everyone can express themselves in a picture easily and readily, and can find an audience for these images, which are casually taken and casually viewed, and perhaps just as casually forgotten) I think that we embrace that casual attitude, and it spills over to all aspects of the media, making it impotent. So I read this article this morning: h...