The Retiring Sort

“I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.”

― J.K. Rowling

I grew up with books. I think every room in our house but the dining room had bookshelves. The living room had built-ins that housed Children’s Classics (Tom Sawyer, Heidi, Alice in Wonderland, and more), The Encyclopaedia Brittanica (and its updating year books), and a wealth of other works of every kind. Our bedrooms had shelves for our favorites, and Dad even built paperback racks on the doors of Mom’s bedroom closet. In the den our parents shared, books spilled right off the shelves and decorated just about every surface.

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

― Marcus Tullius Cicero

 

When we were small children, our Mom taught us to read, and read to us during the daytime. The Just So Stories of Kipling and Winnie the Pooh‘s stories and poems by A.A. Milne were favorites of mine, and I remember reading (and sometime reciting) them to my own children later. At our childhood bedtime, Dad read us a chapter each night from a classic children’s novel. He put his all into the voices in The Wind In the Willows, The Jungle Book, and Alice in Wonderland, and got a tear in his eye while reading Heidi.

Books were living things for us when we were growing up. I can remember getting my first library card, and driving weekly with my Mom to trade in one week’s treasures for the next. The written word is indeed a magical thing. My mother had a love of reading from her father, who read to her and took her to the library. We took a love of reading from our parents and grandparents who read to us and made sure books were always in great supply.

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

So, our children have a love of reading from us, which they have passed on to our grandchildren, all of whom love books, even in the age of TV and online games. Both my girls take part in book clubs, and my son reads everything he can find time to read. For her baby shower, one of my girls asked that everyone bring a book, and she asked her dad to build a bookshelf for the baby’s room.

That same daughter had a childhood visual disability which required years of therapy to enable her to scan a page (as opposed to reading one word at a  time), but she always loved books, and enjoyed being read to (especially by her siblings) even when she was very tiny. In elementary school, her little eyes were often red from rubbing and strain, but she toughed it out and became a great reader. In fact, she’s the one who introduced me to the Kindle e-reader. She always has a book with her in one form or another now.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

― C.S. Lewis

 

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

Books are amiable companions – filling in quiet time, cheering us when we’re blue, bringing back wonderful memories, and providing opportunities to share with our children and grandchildren. They can teach us, test us, and open our imaginations. I can’t imagine a greater gift than teaching a child to read, then fostering a love of all the possibilities reading opens.

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

My Mom used bookplates, lovingly pasted in the front of every volume, with her name inscribed on them. Some said Ex Libris, Some just had drawings of books, and some had this quote from Ernst Morgan on them:

Now, I’ve inherited many of those books, and I have to figure out where to keep them, to say nothing of when to read them. Biographies, historical fiction, essays, and more await me.  And they join a number of my own books I’d like to read again, as well as the out of sight (but not out of mind) library I’m slowly amassing on my Kindle. I really don’t want to part with any of them.

 “A book is a gift you can open again and again.”
― Garrison Keillor

Still, I fear that when we move from this house, some of the books lining our shelves will have to find new homes. There are three fairly full bookshelves in our guest room, one in my den (and two in my beloved’s), a rather large one in our exercise/TV room, and others in our living room and hallways. I now have three boxes of my Mom’s from my sister’s house, and I’m running out of surfaces to fill…

But no matter how many books I have, on paper or electronically, there will always be more magic out there to find and enjoy, and to share. You can really never have too many books.

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

― Stephen King, On Writing