More Book Thoughts…

The Idea of the Book

I’m often asked why I continue buying books when I already have so much still unread. Part of the reason (putting aside my obvious addiction) is a practical one. Partially because of the existing backlog it’s quite possible that a book I buy today might not actually be read for months or even years. So what if that book is part of a series? I could read it a year or two later, enjoy it, and look for the sequel only to find that it is no longer in print and either expensive or impossible to obtain where, if I’d bought it when it was published, I wouldn’t have that problem. So why don’t I just download it on Kindle or similar (I’m often asked) to save space? It’s a reasonable question but my interrogators don’t often like my answer. Books, I propose, are more – indeed much more – than words on a page and most especially when that page is actually a screen. Books are, at least to me, more than a finite amount of text in one place. A book is a thing, something you can hold in your hand, which has heft and a distinct physical presence. Without that element of physicality you don’t, again as far as I’m concerned, have a book – at least not a real one. You can see why I’ve been called a Luddite!

Hardbacks?

Hardbacks do have several advantages over their softer brethren.  There are much more durable than paperbacks for one thing. Within my collection the vast majority of hardbacks are non-fiction most especially reference books like Encyclopaedias. If you’re going to reference a book often then hardback is the way to go. Hardbacks have the distinct advantage of coming out sometimes LONG before that paperback appears. Sometimes, of course, the paperback never appears and you’re presented with a choice: hardback or nothing. Sometimes that’s a difficult choice. Naturally most of my books are paperback for practical reasons. They’re generally much smaller, often considerably less expensive and, probably most importantly, a lot lighter to hold and carry around. For me paperbacks are the way to go.

Children’s Literature

Although I could read from around age 3 years and could read easily in school (so much so that when I was assessed for reading age the assessor didn’t have a test far enough ahead for me to struggle with) I never read any of the classic tales most children grow up with. I’m not entirely sure why that was the case. Maybe I simply thought – OK, I can read, I can read well but is there any reason to actually read things? It was only much later, in my early teens, that the book bug bit me and hasn’t let go since. Because at that age being caught with a children’s classic would have been social and reputational death – even way before the Facebook age – I never went back to read them. I’ve managed a few over the years but will (finally) get around to reading what is often the foundation of a reading child’s imagination in the years ahead. I certainly no longer have any kind of fear of embarrassment reading The Jungle Book or Wizard of Oz as an adult.

The Other

There’s always a danger in reading, or any other activity, that we’ll naturally gravitate to the familiar and, by doing so, miss out on so many other experiences. One of the ways I like to challenge that tendency (and myself in the process) is to read books about and by people who are not like me. So I make a conscious effort to read books, both fiction and non-fiction, by women, books in translation (because I haven’t got the time, effort or, probably, capability of learning languages well enough to easily read in them), books written by people who grew up and died long before I was born and lived in very different worlds, books written in English by authors who originate neither from England or Europe and those who I know hold different viewpoints from my own. I am certainly not arrogant enough to think that I know everything. I am equally open to the idea, however low the probability [grin] that the ideas I do hold might be wrong. I’m one of those weird people who, when proven wrong, become quite excited and actually rather pleased that something I once held to be true has been thrown into doubt. Rather than proving that I held faulty beliefs I now, once corrected, hold better beliefs – right up to the point that I’m proven wrong again. Long may the corrective process continue! Maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll get a hint about what things are really all about. I’ll be sure to let you know when/if that happens.