Words in a Row

Digging around in my hard drive, I found an article I wrote for a magazine a decade ago, when ereaders were new, hard to get hold of, and I didn't have one. It's about my love of books.

Thought it might be fun to share.

***

Words in a Row

Jane Davitt



Love of books and love of reading are two very different, not necessarily overlapping, addictions.

I think it's fair to class them as addictions because they can drive people to astonishing extremes of behaviour in their search for a fix…

'Dad reads everything from The Anatomy of Melancholy to Acta Mathematica and Paris-Match and will sit on a curbstone separating damp newspapers wrapped around garbage in order to see continued-on-page-eight.'

Have Space Suit – Will Travel by Robert A Heinlein

... as shown by my own ability to cook, clean, and emerge from the bath with one dry hand still clutching a book, and my equal inability to go to sleep, no matter how late the hour, without reading at least a page.

As for collecting books, well, I own over 4,000, shelved in alphabetical order within category, came back off my honeymoon in Canada with suitcases labeled 'heavy' as I'd somehow acquired 54 books in three weeks... but I'm positively normal compared to some people...

'I'd known many book collectors, and they'd all heard of Allister Toomey, to their rage and sorrow. Toomey had spent a considerable inheritance on books, all kinds of books, from double four-edges to first editions to pulps and comic books that were just getting to be worth owning. Much of what he had owned had been unique, irreplaceable. He'd kept them all in a huge barn he'd managed to hang onto somehow.

He'd spent everything else on books: there was no money left to take care of them. They moldered in that barn, Rats and insects got into them, rain dripped through the roof. If he'd sold a few of them he'd have been able to take care of the rest. I'd known a lot of collectors and they all had a tendency to brood over Allister Toomey. '

Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

I don't yet own anything electronic and portable that I can use to read books, but I have, over the last few years, mastered the art of reading fiction on my computer. At first it was difficult; I'd scroll too fast and the page would leap forward and I'd sigh and scroll back up, trying to find my place. It's also not as easy to get comfortable, but after suffering trying to read the latest Harry Potter which was too weighty to be comfortably held in one hand, and too thick to open fully, there are advantages to a single, flat page.

Ebooks (electronic books) are something to consider as well; I'm certainly tempted by the idea of packing a hundred books for a trip in something the size of a calculator. They can be read on something like a Palm OS or any handheld PC device. The software programs available allow you to adjust the size of the text, remember where you stopped reading and even add notes. With immediate downloads there's no waiting and the books are slightly cheaper than the print versions; one site I found had the recent best seller 'The Da Vinci Code' for $13.46 USD; Amazon.com sells it in hardcover for $14.97 plus shipping.

Another interesting way to 'read' is books on tape, or, these days, CD. There's something very soothing about having a book read to you by someone chosen for their pleasant voice and it can make a change to listening to music as you do a boring task.

I would class myself as loving reading the words more than the way in which they're presented which is why I'd never really call myself a serious collector. My library has a few rare books, a smattering of first editions, but nothing that would really bring a fanatical gleam to a collector's eye. I collect books because I want to read them and I keep them because just suppose I want to read them again? Which I do, very often, because delightful though it is to find a new book, there's nothing like reading one you've practically memorized and anticipating the upcoming treats.

I don't remember learning to read; it was some time at the age of four, but I do recall being deliberately naughty at nursery school as the punishment was to be sent to the book corner... which is a terrible idea really. What were they thinking?

Once I could, I did, and I've never stopped. When people tell me smugly that they don't read books, I look at them in silent, uncomprehending pity.

My four-year old daughter has a book that begins with the single, beautifully simple line 'I like books' and ends with 'Yes, I really do like books' after a handful of pages listing a different sort of book ( 'Books about dinosaurs, and books about monsters'). The author of I Like Books, Anthony Browne has gone directly to the root of the matter for me.

I like books.

I like the look of them, neat rectangles enclosing waiting worlds; the smell of them, crisp and new, musty and old. I like the way old books have a smell that seems to mellow to be the same, no matter what paper and ink was used, no matter how they're stored. I like the way a book shop or a library is quiet and yet not, the weight of the stored words pressing down heavily on any human noise, flattening it to silence so that the books themselves can whisper and chat.

I like the way that a book is legion, its words for ever. Burn a book, rip it up, ban it from schools, libraries, shops – there will always be one they miss, one to be passed, hand-to-hand, one to be shared.

I have a thousand books in my head, a million sentences jostling each other, ready to rise to my lips to bolster an argument, speak for me when my own words are inadequate.

Books have formed the way I think far more so than any other influence. Tolerance, a spirit of adventure, a belief, clung to stubbornly, that right will prevail and the ending be happy.

Yes. I love books. Yes, I'm addicted to reading.

But I can stop any time.

Really.

I just don't want to.