The Echo of Old Books

by Barbara Davis

This book is dedicated to the librarians and the booksellers . . . Custodians of imagination, feeders of hungry hearts, matchmakers of the written word. Where would we be without your labors of love?

There is nothing quite so alive as a book that has been well loved. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books

Was it really possible to register the emotions of another person simply by touching an object that had belonged to them?

a book’s echoes had little to do with genre or subject matter. Rather, a book’s energy seemed to be a reflection of its owner.

There’s nothing more personal than a book, especially one that’s become an important part of someone’s life.”

“Books are feelings,” he replied simply. “They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there. It only makes sense that some of what we feel when we’re reading would . . . rub off.”

Not all echoes were happy. Like humans, books experienced their share of heartache—and like humans, they remembered.

Without a reader, a book was a blank slate, an object with no breath or pulse of its own. But once a book became part of someone’s world, it came to life, with a past and a present—and, if properly cared for, a future.

Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore? —Henry Ward Beecher

Books were safe. They had plots that followed predictable patterns, beginnings, middles, and endings. Usually happy, though not always. But if something tragic happened in a book, you could just close it and choose a new one, unlike real life, where events often played out without the protagonist’s consent.