Here's a little fact about me: I love books (note: shocker, I know). I have loved books for as long as I can remember and I probably loved them before I could remember too. They've always been a part of my life: my dad used to read to my sister and I before going to bed, I started reading stories to my siblings once I'd learnt how and I've read to myself most nights since. It was a habit and the habit stayed.
Books were the one thing we didn't have to beg for: toys and games were for special occasions like birthdays and Christmases, books were for whenever. If we wanted a new book or magazine (note: I, personally, was a big fan of W.I.T.C.H. just so you guys know.), we simply had to ask for it. I realise it may sound like we were spoiled, but we were not. (note: I'm very aware that me saying that probably doesn't help).
Here's another little fact about me: I didn't read Harry Potter before I was 12. That is partially due to the fact that I've never been a big fan of being told what to do and my elementary school friends kept talking about it; and partially explained by how dreadful the very first chapter of the first book is (note: don't judge me you know it is).Anyway. When I eventually got into it, years later, my dad gave me his copy of Philosopher's Stone because he had read it and didn't mind passing it along (note: he is very generous, I would never do that). I, somehow, convinced my mum I needed Chamber of Secrets or I'd forget what happened in the first book. I then got sick midway through Prisoner of Azkaban and got given Goblet of Fire to make me feel better about being stuck in bed. I got Order of the Phoenix because I had agreed to go to a parents-teachers conference and was rewarded with Half-Blood Prince after said conference because my parents were happy with what they heard (note: I was a stellar student what can I say?). Finally, a couple of months later, I was surprised with an early pre-order of Deathly Hallows. My point here is that my parents probably liked seeing us engrossed in a story and they liked making sure we were entertained at all times. Also, books were less expensive than new Gameboy or Nintendo DS games...
I grew up reading and collecting books. They became one of my favourite things in the world. They were sources of inspiration, doors to other worlds, houses to characters I adored and very very very special objects. So special, in fact, I used to get extremely upset when they stopped looking the way they used to in the shop. There was no bigger tragedy than when I accidentally stained a page because I was having a drink or a snack while reading. I felt bad when I noticed I had ripped a page. I wanted to get a new copy of every single book that had been damaged from being carried in my bag. I would get upset at the sight of a broken spine. I could not comprehend people highlighting entire passages or taking notes in their copies. What was wrong with them? How dare they? That's how bad it was.
I thought books should be handle with care and be kept in pristine condition, that's how much I loved them. I thought books were precious. Some may even say I considered them to be sacred.
Except they're not.
Maybe they were at some point in History: when printing had not been invented yet, when they were expensive as hell, when only a handful of the population knew how to read… This time is long gone and whether you like the idea or not books are not sacred objects: they're objects.
The epiphany came at the beginning of my last year in high school. If you're familiar with the French school system, I did "un baccalauréat littéraire". If you're not familiar with the French school system, it means I chose to focus my studies on humanities. It also means I had to do lots of reading. I was not always very happy with the chosen titles but, reading was my favourite kind of homework. That year, I had a Literature class for which I had to read and study 4 different books: Gargantua by Rabelais, Tous les matins du monde by Quignard, Les mémoires de guerre (tome 3) by De Gaulle and À la lumière d'hiver by Jaccottet. (note: if you don't know these titles, they happen to be French works by French authors. If you have heard of these titles, you might understand how utterly depressing this seemed.)
Our teacher spent the very first lesson insisting on the fact that we needed to know those books by heart as we wouldn't be allowed to use our copies the day of the exam. This was a couple of years ago so I don't remember what he said in details, but he told us something along the lines of: "I need you to read each of these at least three times during our time together. Actually, I need you to read them as many times as it takes for the spine to be completely broken. I need to be able to flip your copies upside down and see some pages fall." He insisted we should use highlighters and pens on our books because he was going to say very important things that we shouldn't forget, and we clearly didn't have any time to waste copying entire pages. He also mentioned that we were working on what we call "des poches" (smaller books, paperbacks) which are significantly less expensive than "des grands formats" (hardbacks). Also, we had bought these books: they were ours and we could do whatever the hell we wanted with them. Why should we feel bad about damaging paper when it's meant to be used and cost close to nothing? We ended up spending the whole year reading, taking notes, rereading, highlighting, rerereading, taking more notes and highlighting in another colour…
The point he was, more or less desperately, trying to make that day was that what truly matters is not the book itself, but what is inside. What you find within the pages. The words. The story. The essence.
Books are objects. They're stacks of paper on which thousands of words have been printed. When you think about it, we rarely buy books for the book itself. We buy books because we want to read a story, a testimony, an investigation. We buy books for what we're going to find inside and for what we get to experience through them. We buy books for what they bring us, whether that's some time in a different setting or knowledge on a certain subject.
The hard(-ish) truth, here, is that publishing/book-making is an industry. You might not like the sound of it, especially if you consider publishing as a grand and noble pursuit, but it is. Publishing is an industry and it produces books. Books are products, they're objects. And, spoiler alert, just like in numerous other industries, if the product isn't sold it is destroyed. Books are destroyed and go back to simply being paper all the time.
If you sanctify books, it reduces the magic of stories to the stack of paper that conveys it. And that is tragic.
Read books, love the stories they tell and live the words they contain. Do highlight your favourite quotes in your favourite books and use a different colour every time you reread the them so you can tell what parts touched you at different times of your life. Take notes in your copies because your thoughts will make the story yours. Do not, under any circumstance, be afraid of what your reading is doing to the paper. It doesn't matter. A stain, a rip, a broken spine will be a story of its own, a memory forever linked to those words.
My copy of Wuthering Heights still has all the bookmarks I had stuck in it when I was writing a paper about it in my third year at university. My copy of Matilda is still annotated from the time I read it for my dissertation. There's a stain of blood in one of my Philosopher's Stone copies because I once cut my finger at dinner and read before going to bed. There are tear stains on the last few pages of my Cyrano de Bergerac because I cried in the train at how utterly beautiful the writing was.
If you're lucky enough, whatever happens to your books will be nothing compared to what happens to your soul. You'll learn, you'll travel, you'll dream and you'll change.
Books are objects, and it's fine because words are not.
Books were the one thing we didn't have to beg for: toys and games were for special occasions like birthdays and Christmases, books were for whenever. If we wanted a new book or magazine (note: I, personally, was a big fan of W.I.T.C.H. just so you guys know.), we simply had to ask for it. I realise it may sound like we were spoiled, but we were not. (note: I'm very aware that me saying that probably doesn't help).
Here's another little fact about me: I didn't read Harry Potter before I was 12. That is partially due to the fact that I've never been a big fan of being told what to do and my elementary school friends kept talking about it; and partially explained by how dreadful the very first chapter of the first book is (note: don't judge me you know it is).Anyway. When I eventually got into it, years later, my dad gave me his copy of Philosopher's Stone because he had read it and didn't mind passing it along (note: he is very generous, I would never do that). I, somehow, convinced my mum I needed Chamber of Secrets or I'd forget what happened in the first book. I then got sick midway through Prisoner of Azkaban and got given Goblet of Fire to make me feel better about being stuck in bed. I got Order of the Phoenix because I had agreed to go to a parents-teachers conference and was rewarded with Half-Blood Prince after said conference because my parents were happy with what they heard (note: I was a stellar student what can I say?). Finally, a couple of months later, I was surprised with an early pre-order of Deathly Hallows. My point here is that my parents probably liked seeing us engrossed in a story and they liked making sure we were entertained at all times. Also, books were less expensive than new Gameboy or Nintendo DS games...
I grew up reading and collecting books. They became one of my favourite things in the world. They were sources of inspiration, doors to other worlds, houses to characters I adored and very very very special objects. So special, in fact, I used to get extremely upset when they stopped looking the way they used to in the shop. There was no bigger tragedy than when I accidentally stained a page because I was having a drink or a snack while reading. I felt bad when I noticed I had ripped a page. I wanted to get a new copy of every single book that had been damaged from being carried in my bag. I would get upset at the sight of a broken spine. I could not comprehend people highlighting entire passages or taking notes in their copies. What was wrong with them? How dare they? That's how bad it was.
I thought books should be handle with care and be kept in pristine condition, that's how much I loved them. I thought books were precious. Some may even say I considered them to be sacred.
Except they're not.
Maybe they were at some point in History: when printing had not been invented yet, when they were expensive as hell, when only a handful of the population knew how to read… This time is long gone and whether you like the idea or not books are not sacred objects: they're objects.
The epiphany came at the beginning of my last year in high school. If you're familiar with the French school system, I did "un baccalauréat littéraire". If you're not familiar with the French school system, it means I chose to focus my studies on humanities. It also means I had to do lots of reading. I was not always very happy with the chosen titles but, reading was my favourite kind of homework. That year, I had a Literature class for which I had to read and study 4 different books: Gargantua by Rabelais, Tous les matins du monde by Quignard, Les mémoires de guerre (tome 3) by De Gaulle and À la lumière d'hiver by Jaccottet. (note: if you don't know these titles, they happen to be French works by French authors. If you have heard of these titles, you might understand how utterly depressing this seemed.)
Our teacher spent the very first lesson insisting on the fact that we needed to know those books by heart as we wouldn't be allowed to use our copies the day of the exam. This was a couple of years ago so I don't remember what he said in details, but he told us something along the lines of: "I need you to read each of these at least three times during our time together. Actually, I need you to read them as many times as it takes for the spine to be completely broken. I need to be able to flip your copies upside down and see some pages fall." He insisted we should use highlighters and pens on our books because he was going to say very important things that we shouldn't forget, and we clearly didn't have any time to waste copying entire pages. He also mentioned that we were working on what we call "des poches" (smaller books, paperbacks) which are significantly less expensive than "des grands formats" (hardbacks). Also, we had bought these books: they were ours and we could do whatever the hell we wanted with them. Why should we feel bad about damaging paper when it's meant to be used and cost close to nothing? We ended up spending the whole year reading, taking notes, rereading, highlighting, rerereading, taking more notes and highlighting in another colour…
The point he was, more or less desperately, trying to make that day was that what truly matters is not the book itself, but what is inside. What you find within the pages. The words. The story. The essence.
Books are objects. They're stacks of paper on which thousands of words have been printed. When you think about it, we rarely buy books for the book itself. We buy books because we want to read a story, a testimony, an investigation. We buy books for what we're going to find inside and for what we get to experience through them. We buy books for what they bring us, whether that's some time in a different setting or knowledge on a certain subject.
The hard(-ish) truth, here, is that publishing/book-making is an industry. You might not like the sound of it, especially if you consider publishing as a grand and noble pursuit, but it is. Publishing is an industry and it produces books. Books are products, they're objects. And, spoiler alert, just like in numerous other industries, if the product isn't sold it is destroyed. Books are destroyed and go back to simply being paper all the time.
If you sanctify books, it reduces the magic of stories to the stack of paper that conveys it. And that is tragic.
Read books, love the stories they tell and live the words they contain. Do highlight your favourite quotes in your favourite books and use a different colour every time you reread the them so you can tell what parts touched you at different times of your life. Take notes in your copies because your thoughts will make the story yours. Do not, under any circumstance, be afraid of what your reading is doing to the paper. It doesn't matter. A stain, a rip, a broken spine will be a story of its own, a memory forever linked to those words.
My copy of Wuthering Heights still has all the bookmarks I had stuck in it when I was writing a paper about it in my third year at university. My copy of Matilda is still annotated from the time I read it for my dissertation. There's a stain of blood in one of my Philosopher's Stone copies because I once cut my finger at dinner and read before going to bed. There are tear stains on the last few pages of my Cyrano de Bergerac because I cried in the train at how utterly beautiful the writing was.
If you're lucky enough, whatever happens to your books will be nothing compared to what happens to your soul. You'll learn, you'll travel, you'll dream and you'll change.
Books are objects, and it's fine because words are not.
0 Comments