I am perpetually interested in the question of how a book finds its' reader. It seems to me to be one of the most magical parts of the reading experience. I love it when the right book falls into my hands at the right time, and enjoy watching when it happens on a mass scale, too -- when hundreds of thousands of people across the country or the world fall in love with the same book at the same time. Julia Keller, the cultural critic for the Chicago Tribune, has just written a wonderful piece about this idea which offers a lovely new way of looking at your bookshelf -- and, I think, the best argument yet why books will never die: they are physical reminders of the moment of magic that brought us to them. Here's her opening salvo (and a photo of Shakespeare and Co. Books in Paris):
Every book tells a story. Sometimes the best story it tells -- enthralling, astonishing, unexpected -- has nothing to do with the narrative concocted by the author. Surrounding every book is a meta-story, a radiance that shifts and changes with each set of hands that picks it up, flips impatiently through the opening pages and finally finds the page labeled "Chapter 1."
The extra story is how that book made its way to you in the first place.
1 comment:
Yes, yes, yes! I could never part with my copy of Little Women, for example because just seeing it reminds me of falling in love with reading and first thinking that I wanted to be a reader. When I open it, I fall into it on so many levels.
Post a Comment