Old Musings on Books and Bookstores

 I found this in a very old Moleskine notebook I wrote over 15 years ago.  It is an old musing, the type that come to me when I am writing for the single and most "useless" exercise of simply moving my hand to put things down on paper. 

Books stand for some many things that I could not being to imagine the same type of responsibility placed on a human being.  They symbolize the capacity of a society to tolerate other’s ideas, the permanence of knowledge, art, thoughts, feelings and emotions—and they sit quietly and nobly on shelves of libraries, waiting for us, more loyal than any dog waiting his master’s attention.  I don’t have anything against books, nor do I demand (like Milosz) to know everything.  I know that I have in my library more books than I could ever be possible to devour in a lifetime (although I must credit the fact that I have done a fairly good job of it).  But there is something lovely to those silent sentinels, an irrepressible call beckoning me to a world of knowledge—albeit so limited—and that is what Milosz misses in his quote. 

If we cannot simply love our books for what they represent, how could we ever appreciate the knowledge they contain?  I would think it highly selfish to purchase a book for only what it can offer me objectively.  A book can offer aesthetic comfort by just resting on a desk; it cries out its function, its purpose, just as a baseball begs to be thrown.

And then this little part about bookstores that made me remember the "old ways."

A bookstore is the grandest of all candy stories for book lovers.  And I am not only referring to the mega-stores with millions of titles, but also of the limited stock “mom and pop” shops which, in their ever-decreasing numbers, never go out of style.  Budgeting for book purchases every month is part of the book lover’s existence.  Unwrapping a cellophane copy of a new title (as they are often wrapped in Europe) can be one of the biggest thrills for a devoted reader.  Reading living writers can also add to the excitement.  Every time my favorite contemporary author publishes a new book my excitement borders on mania.  What would the first sentence be like?  What kind of plot or interesting twists will he/she dare to take next?  There are probably those who would accuse me of escapism; I can’t deal with the real world, they say, and therefore I seek to avoid it.  But there are all kinds of devices for escapism in society today.  Compared to video games and pornography, I hardly think reading a bad addiction, or as a choice to building our perfect place.  Read for enjoyment.  Knowledge should be, at best, an insignificant by-product.