I pick up my book and fan through the pages. It's is neither a best seller nor educational, but I like the story just the same.
I tend to gravitate towards mind candy. Nothing too filling - nice and light to help me escape a gruelling day of shuffling papers and dealing with obnoxious co-workers.
We all have our vices. Mine is the written word.
I flip through the tattered pages. Some are even still dog-eared to remind me of the last place I stopped.
Even though my home is littered with pretty bookmarks, I tend to feel the need to mangle my books. I guess it's my way of marking them as mine.
I like the feel of paper in my hands and the sound of the rustling pages being turned as I become more and more engrossed in the story.
I know technology is kicking paper books to the curb. I see it coming as everything is becoming electronic.
If you know the story of "Who Moved My Cheese," I'm like the mouse who balks at change but eventually welcomes it. I need to bitch about it for a while before I'm ready and willing to move on. But I will move on.
I also recognize the fact that in a few short years, I will probably have an e-reader and love it.
But I will always miss the smell of my dusty books pressed into my hands.
I wonder if those new-fangled gadgets can come with an option of "old book" smell?
3 comments:
Despite my earlier diatribe about loathing reading, there is something magical about old, old books.
When I go to the library at Nazareth, their Religion section is full of books dating from 1880s onward. I sometimes go and just hold the ancient tome in my lap, ogling the latin. Or poring over that fabulous, dramatic sincere style in which Victorian theologians and historians loved to write in.
There was an urgency and a passion about which they wrote that today has now been replaced with incessant sarcasm and wry nihilism.
Not that such a postmodern sensibility doesn't have its own value. Just allowing myself to fall into that soft, warm trap of a better yesteryear that never was.
Please excuse the purple prose. Been working on a beast of a paper for one of my classes, and my brain is currently stuck on a loop of hyperbole.
Anyway. How's the new year been treating you? Myself- pretty darn terrible. Numerous interviews, none resulting in employment. A parlour that was to be hosted by Nazareth in April has had the funding fall through. A class I thought began in Mid February started last week, and so I had to drop out.
My usually realistic optimism, as long as you take action something will come through attitude has faltered.
I'm fucked.
Oh, and that pic of the preacher turns out it's from some wacky activist trying to save America from consumerism. But I agree with you. I do not wish to be preached at, nonetheless.
I love the smell of used bookstores. I can get lost for hours rummaging through old flakey books. I love the feel of the paper. And you're right, the words that were used "way back then" make you pause and think.
Even when insults are flung they are dramatic and in some cases very funny - but rude nonetheless.
I have an old poem book that my mother gave me that (I think) belonged to my grandmother. It does not have famous poems in it, but is full of poems for children. It's not frou-frou but very much like the Grimm Brothers original stories. A little bit dark.
The pages are stained from fingers flipping through them and they are falling out in some sections. The leather and binding is cracked, but it remains one of those books I remember loving as a child and enjoying today.
My new year has been busy as hell. Work treats me like I were two or three people and just keeps piling on the projects. It's good that I'm busy, but sometimes I forget to breathe and the panic settles in and makes my head swim. Sorry to hear about your rough beginnings. In like a lion out like a lamb maybe?
You'll never get me away from real books. I still don't download music, I buy it first then rip the CD's. I'll embrace technology but onlt at a certain pace on my own grounds hahah!
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was really written about a woman who was experiencing menopause. They changed the names to protect the innocent!
LOL Jenn, that could be true. Good luck with the homeopathic search. I totally sympathise with the hot flushes. Even though I was mainly over my flu and back at work, this last week I've been getting the hot flushes you get when you are ill. I keep joking with people whether or not a bad case of flu can bring on early menopause. I didn't like it.
The big move? Two weeks to go.
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