This would be a fabulous place for a child to grow up! I love being surrounded by books (see last week’s Quotable) and as

“I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.”

- C. S. Lewis, author

This is so true! There is something soothing about being surrounded by books.

“Sometimes it’s a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven’t even had their spines cracked. ‘Why do you buy books you don’t even read?’ our daughter asks us. That’s like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”

- Sarah Addison Allen, author

A little poetry for a Sunday morning…

“WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars”

- W.B. Yeats, Irish poet

Virginia Woolf shows up here on occasion, but in this case, I think she’s dead wrong.

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”

Actually, I think the Almighty will give us the keys to the library.

- Virginia Woolf, author

Considering I just finished reading NOS4A2 at about 2:00 this morning, this is a perfect quote for today:

“By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry…”

- Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

I love this comparison! One of the great things about a used book is that it has had a life before it came to you. Someone bought it and read it; it spent time on someone else’s nightstand next to their bed or in their backpack. Maybe they read it on their couch or flew with it to another continent. It might have led a more interesting life than you have.

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”

- Virginia Woolf, author of two books I loved: Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway, along with many others

This sounds like a lovely way to spend an afternoon — or a month, if the weather is good:

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

John Keats, English Romantic poet

My parents didn’t have quite as many books as the ones below, but we had a lot and I had a library card. There were some books that my parents set aside (“until you’re older”) they were pretty lenient about it — there were plenty of arguments with the librarian at the check-out desk, when they wanted to stifle my endless curiosity.

“I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.”

- C.S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia, among other things.

I’ve posted several comments about eBooks and eReaders, so why not one more? This states the case very simply — and I don’t know anyone, even the most avid Kindle or Nook fan, who is ready to get rid of all of their books:

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”

- Stephen Fry, English comedian, writer, actor, humorist, novelist, poet, columnist, filmmaker, television personality and technophile.

Interesting commentary on Fiction vs. Non-Fiction”

“Fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through arguments and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.”

- Jonathan Gottschall, Boston Globe, “Why Fiction is Good For You”