I've been doing a string of research for my novel lately. I'm trying to discover as much as I can about asian culture, history, plants and animals, and mythology (it's what my world is based on). Every time I go into a bookstore these days I spend some time seeing what I can find. Last time I was in a Barnes and Nobles an incredibly helpful woman lead me to the Oriental Mythology shelf and pulled off 7 or 8 books in about 5 minutes.
And it really started to hit me what an incredible gift and resource our access to literature in America really is.
For hundreds of years only the wealthiest owned books. Kings gave books to each other as gifts and tribute. The illustrated bible manuscript was often the single most valuable thing inside a church. Even after the printing press opened up access to the written word, most of the printed works were gathered in large private collections. The concept of a public library is a truly modern one.
And today we can usually find at least one major bookstore in a city, not to mention a collection of libraries. A single Barnes and Nobles might have over 100,000 books on its shelfs. Think about that for a second. The hard work of over 100,000 minds just sitting there, a massive repository of human experience to draw on in an instant.
I've often wondered what a human being could become if she or he could live 1,000 lives and remember each one. In a way, I'm realizing that we can come closer to that than anyone ever could at any point in history. Those bookshelves are filled with far more than 1,000 lives, real and imagined. So many windows into human experience, so many beautiful ideas and the consequences of terrible choices, and all of them available to us whenever we like.
Maybe that's why I love just being in bookstores so much. The moment I walk in I start to relax, and I often find myself smiling. Sometimes I enjoy just wandering through the shelves, running my hands along the book spines. Did you know that books all smell different too? Crack on open and press your nose down on the page sometime. I've actually picked several books based on their smell, and I've enjoyed them all. Maybe books have pheromones...
My point is, the next time you walk into a bookstore, don't head straight for the cafe. Stop and look around at what's happening. Dozens of people are milling around, talking, browsing, reading. They're all there learning together, expanding themselves and absorbing information. They're reading books in the aisles that people had to read by candlelight in hidden basements in the past, to avoid being discovered.
It really is beautiful if you stop and look.
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Gift of Bookstores
Posted by JustinFike at 10:41 PM
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2 comments:
In the last week, I've heard two other people talk about smelling books: Ammon Shea, who just finished reading the OED (you should listen and not just read this story because the audio goes into more detail) and Dean Corso (as played by Johnny Depp) in "The Ninth Gate" (BTW, I don't recommend the movie and am still trying to figure out what I think of it and how I might--and whether I should, but I will, so that's moot--assimilate it).
I have long had such a serious lust for the OED and have almost rationalized buying it. It's so damned expensive, but--and here comes my rationalization--I could--and easily will, over time--spend $30 each on ten other reference works and still not be as satisfied as I would with just that one glorious monument to words. The irony is that when I do buy it (whenever that is), I'll probably get it electronically.
Having and holding and smelling and walking among and talking and listening to and otherwise experiencing old-fashioned hardcopy press is still a beautiful thing and I confess to just loving to be in the presence of books even though I don't read nearly as much as I should. Indeed, I have sometimes argued in all earnestness that just the presence is edifying and maybe it's the idea of a book as much as the substance that we find so uplifting.
Speaking of smells, petrichor (see the NPR story) is a lovely word for one of my favorite smells.
Words are themselves a great gift and I love that Jesus folk are people of words and the Word (which is itself not just a book but a library) and are even saved by the Word become flesh. Maybe that means something bizarre to me that it doesn't mean to other folk, but it means it nonetheless and I love that it does.
And another thing. You remind me of one of my favorite quotes against censorship. From Milton's Areopagitica:
. . . as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life.
Um, sorry for drifting so much. But take it as a compliment (which I mean sincerely) to your blog: that it resonated deeply in so many ways.
Wow, what a fantastic quote!
I'm definitely realizing how much of a love affair I have with books. I've always been that way, but it's more obvious to me lately (you should see my room, it's a total book tornado).
And you're right, I think it's the idea of what a book is, above and beyond the physical thing itself. I love holding something tangible that another person poured countless hours into, working to distill some essence of their own experience and perspective on life for the rest of us.
Also, I just went on a book smelling tour in my room, and its almost surreal how much the smells of different books take me right back to the time and the feelings I had when I first absorbed them. There's this amazing collection of illustrated children's stories and fairytales from the 1930s that I'm "holding on to" from my grandparents, and damn if I didn't almost cry when I smelled those. Memory trip.
"And jack pulled out his sword and struck of the giant's....feathers!"
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