Books in Books and in Other Places
For all lovers of books and of reading, signandsight.com‘s translated and uploaded a brilliant article by Bora Cosic on reading books no one else reads, where books in all their manifestations can be found, and on how complex and all-encompassing the act of reading is.
Personally I require many hours of reading, because I usually read tremendously thick books, and also notably boring ones; I am always convinced that at the core of an abstruse sentence lies the magnificence of a discovery just waiting to be made.
In a time of book’s wavering on the stage of the world, these confessions of an eager book-eater really soothe a bookworm’s battered heart.
I read my fill at various times, not only of printed texts, I was also a careful reader of book covers, bindings, and what is printed on the dust jacket. I would say that one finds an entire culture of the written word in abbreviated form, if one only looks at the narrow column printed on the inner flap of the book jacket, where there is a description as succinct as a dictionary entry telling what the book is about. If all the books in the world were to disappear, (as in “Fahrenheit 451″) and only the book covers remained, perhaps one could reconstruct human thought in this way.
I highly recommend reading the whole article. It’s a breath of fresh air. A subtle smile from a foggy distance, from someone who shares your peculiar convictions.
