I gasped and sobbed and clutched the book when it was over. I was so thankful for the reminder that reading can still be like this, that the realm of the unread always holds, somewhere, the exact thing I'm looking for, whatever it is.
Before the advent of the worldwide web, I sometimes searched bookstore shelves for years before finding a desired volume. But Amazon made it possible to acquire those hard-to-get books with just the click of a mouse.
1w ago
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. And yet most men are satisfied to read what chance puts before them, without ever troubling themselves to inquire whether it is the best or the worst.
I have a theory that people recommend books that flatter the version of themselves they want to present, not the one they actually finished. I've seen too many friends pretend to be knee-deep into some boring academic text when what they want, and what they'd be better off with, is a trashy beach read.
The greatest books aren't necessarily the best-written or the most-read. To me, the greatest books are the ones that give you one idea that changes the trajectory of your life or one story that allows you to see your own life from a fresh perspective.
Paging through nearly three thousand library books, I saw her talk back to them, disagree with them, question and antagonize and struggle with them. In one, she penciled the word succotash —the nineteenth-century equivalent of nonsense ; on the fly of another, inscribed to her lover William Morton Fullerton, she composed a four-stanza poem that does not exist anywhere else in her own hand.
It would be great if all the important books also looked the best, but like dogs or bartenders this is usually not the case. In our matrix, there is a category lurking in the lower right: long-term keeper books that are under-designed and sometimes a bit embarrassing to display, yet personally very important. The best are as ugly as they are essential.
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
