![]() ![]() My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. Lewis had a mindful obsession with books and imagination in his childhood that owed much to his father’s book hoarding habit. “Look what they were getting rid of today!” he presents to my mother’s cringing face, no doubt weekly. Now my Dad volunteers at the local library, blessing this local institution with a talented, well-read mind, and ensuring a pipeline of orphaned books directly to his shelves. I couldn’t help notice how many books were read on my birthday, Christmas, other days of family. He loved seeing the page count, it was indeed astounding. For his birthday one year I transferred sheets and sheets of handwritten titles, page numbers and dates read to a computer. ![]() I brood on my Dad’s collection of books – a 60/40 balance of read and to be read. Novelist Marilynne Robinson confessed to a childhood of reading, and like Schwartz, an unretractable lifetime of reading. “What more felicity can fall to creature than to enjoy delight with liberty?” asked C. I brood on my own reading habit, the ultimate freedom of books. I can see it encompassing an intimate history and geography: the evolution of character, the shifting map of personal taste.įrom Lynne Sharon Schwartz’ Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books What is it all about? What am I doing it for? And the classic addict’s question, What is it doing for me? … I’m not sure my mind could be free without reading, or that the action books have on it is properly termed “interference.” I suspect the interaction of the mind and the book is something more complex. Sorry Proust.Īfter a lifetime of reading, novelist Lynne Sharon Schwartz revisited the expended time, energy and passion, asking How should a life be spent? Was this enough?‘ Lying in the shadow of books, I brood on my reading habit. Do I read them first? The slim ones, those are the ones I read first. Are those more attractive to book buyers? I do love red. The books are now lined up, their crenellated spines showing lots of blacks and red. I moved offices, or locations of work, rather, the word “office” is fungible. I recently spent some meditative, physical moments unpacking boxes of books. ![]()
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