When the Celt suggested that we take our iPads on vacation rather than schlepp books as we would normally do, to my surprise I agreed with barely a demur - which means I refused point blank and then thought about it and admitted he was right. I'd like to say that is a syndrome I've grown out of over the years but, at best, I've just got quicker at admitting he's right.
Yet I didn't like the idea, however practical, because an e-book is not a book as I have known a book to be, and I like books. By which I mean, of course, I have a fetish about owning books - a fetish I find hard to admit despite the fact that, as I said in my post Soignée a couple of weeks ago, I sit surrounded by about 125 square feet of them in the room, once the second bedroom, we call the library.
It's a rather 19th-century name for a room of books, library, and one that smacks of municipal and philanthropic do-gooding. Book-room is even more archaic - on a par with looking-glass, though that fact has not stopped me using either on occasion. Whatever I call the room, if I were to lose its contents, my life would be bereft for I have great pride in ownership, great confidence in the emblematic and talismanic roles books play, and I take enormous pleasure in being able to take a book from our shelves, browse, read or research - precisely as I use the internet, it occurs to me.
My morning read is no longer a newspaper and neither is it, generally speaking, a book. I begin my day with a smile, a cup of coffee and The Daily Beast. Ten years ago, I read a book. Today I am more likely to be looking online and am constantly amazed at how much is available at the tip of a cursor and how much I rely on it - much as I relied on Blogger always being there.
I'm told everything is moving to the cloud, wherever that may be. I look out of the window and no evidence of the internet do I see but I'll take on trust that The Blue Remembered Hills are out there somewhere, floating. How aptly named this insubstantial vehicle. Losing a post is but the most minor of happenings in the technological scheme of things, but if that cloud ever goes poof .....
The room above is Emilio Terry's library at Chateau Rochecotte, photographed by Anthony Denney for Les réussites de la décoration française, 1950 - 1960, Collection Maison & Jardin, Condé Nast S.A. Editions de Pont Royal, 1960
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I feel the same about my books. My daughter keeps harping at me to throw some out and every time I make a decision to clean out the shelves, I come upon some book I had forgotten and begin to read it all over again. Then the whole project is forgotten until we have another fight and the whole thing starts all over again. I think I have gotten rid of three books since I moved here.
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase Bette Midler on air, if I can't smell it I won't read it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about Blogger, and its promise to restore that which it removed. I waited, and waited in vain. And then re-wrote it, with less enthusiasm, which perhaps reflects my current level of interest in blogging, and my preoccupation with more mundane matters. Anyhoo, I'm now departing these shores for a while, and hope that alone will provide some much needed inspiration.
ReplyDeleteHello:
ReplyDeleteYou have our complete sympathy! We too went down on the Blogger Titanic of a week ago, the result of which is a loss of faith in the power of modern technology.
But the power of books to sustain one through life never, as far as we are concerned, falters. They are, as you suggest here, one of the essentials of civilised living and although the internet is superb for reference of all manner of things, it can never, in our view, replace taking a book down from the shelf.
Perhaps we are becoming archaic but we continue to favour such terms as 'book room' and 'looking glass' although 'wireless' as opposed to radio now does seem a little dated.
Two of my favorite subjects: books and Emilio Terry!
ReplyDeleteI've tried to read books electronically but I just can't. I can't concentrate on the screen -I need the tactile THING in my hand with the rythmn of page turns to keep me active.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't lose "Twang" entirely; it triggered something and I wanted to comment. Once in a while I'll hear a voice and it will sound like my mom and dad, my uncles and aunts, my neighbors growing up. I guess this happens to everyone. It's a shot to the heart. Do we still have a little of that twang? I hope so.
ReplyDeleteMeant to comment on "Twang" and forgot. It's a subject close to my heart. Growing up a stone's throw from Texas with a mother who grew up in Louisiana, a grandmother in Georgia, the twang spirals my life like DNA. If you were to hear me speak, you would not guess southern Oklahoma. My high school speech teacher worked tirelessly to eradicate git, jest, thang from our vocabularies. But there are times, such as Terry mentioned when a familiar "twang" strike the chord of my childhood.
ReplyDeleteAs for books, I'm with AD. I want to hold the world in my hand and turn the pages, and read so long in one spot that I have to reach up and turn on the lamp as day darkens knowing I have spent time lost in another world.
Lindraxa, thank you. I rarely get rid of books except, perhaps, for the odd paperback I know I'm not going to read again. Usually, I donate them to our condo library. I look around at the books piled on books and still resist buying the bookcase I know I need for the living room.
ReplyDeleteLaurent, thank you. I totally agree with Bette Midler. Who wouldn't?
ReplyDeleteJane and Lance Hattatt, thank you. We have a friend who still says wireless when referring to the radio. Probably still uses L.s.d. (that should mystify some people!!)
ReplyDeleteColumnist, thank you. My interest in blogging is so conditioned by how much time I have - or so little. Have a safe trip!
ReplyDeleteThe Devoted Classicist, thank you. There is more Emilio Terry to come.
ReplyDeleteArchitectDesign, thank you. I understand your experience very well but I shall give the new way a try. I'm taking my iPad anyway. The problem - the BIG problem - is that I cannot write a blog post on an iPad!
ReplyDeleteTerry, thank you. Oh, boy do you still have that twang and I just love it. As I said in the post that went poof I've not met an accent I don't like!
ReplyDeleteHome before dark, thank you. I spoke with my sister and brother-in-law today and heard the twang come back to my own voice together with words I cannot use here - twang and dialect go hand-in-hand.
ReplyDeleteAs to reading - one of life's biggest and most civilizing of pleasures!
A library is such a wonderful use for a room ~ though only if filled with books one genuinely loves, not selected just for the colour of their spines.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, and yet, blogger, online book reading and news on line is fabulous too, and I cannot imagine not starting my morning with a latte and a scan of the papers on my ipad. So I don't see why we can't have both. After all, there is something mystical and magical about turning the pages of an old, much loved book.
Blue Fruit, thank you. Our library is filled with what we read, have read and will read again. I don't know if you ever read my post of a while ago in which I wrote that when the university I used to work for closed its library I was able to get most of what I'd ever ordered for it plus a lot more. Thus, together with some Atlanta schools, I am the beneficiary of one man's conclusion that the modern student has no need of books as the internet has everything that student might require. Depending on how that education is delivered, he may well be right. If he is .... I'm not sure where that leaves us all.
ReplyDeleteI had these old classic books that I loved and my mom through them out. I was so mad. She should of asked me first.
ReplyDelete