Last night I read the following anthology of the love of books: In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way.
My books give me the best riches - those of Fancy; and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice!" Williams Hazlitt, "On Reading Old Books" (1821)
After reading the quote I then glanced over at "my bookshelves" - the books that I cherish. Why do some make the shelves, and some don't? I thought about that last night, going through the books in "my case". What I do when I read is make the book a part of my personal diary. I put the date in the front cover right when I begin. Then throughout the book when something reminds me of a memory, or changes my way of looking at life, or evokes an emotion in me that I want to recall later - I underline that section, and once again put a little date in the margin. Now, when I am lonely, tired, happy, excited, frustrated, bored, any emotion in our realm - I can pick up my history - flip through any book & see 1-2 marks that immediately transport me to a time in my life. Amazing the power to then recreate for me the moment in my life that I had first read the lines. Even the scents/weather/people of that time in my life seem to come alive when I open the pages and reread the marked lines. If you do not yet have "your shelf" or have not yet found books to be a major part of your enjoyment of life - I again encourage you to at least make yourself a little shelf. Go around your house. I'll bet all of you could find a few books of your own - that have shaped who you are. Mysteries, suspense, sports, biographies, travels, children's books - there has got to be at least one that evokes a memory for you. Give yourself the gift of finding out who you are - just give yourself an hour in any bookstore. No matter who you are you will find something that is "you" - that defines you. As you then go through the rest of your life - you will find strength just by flipping through your personal history - what makes and defines you as an individual, what has helped make you unique, what has made you strong.
November 1, 2007 Newsletter - Misc. Booklover Quotes
Last night I was reading some quotes and found obvious favorites to me, a lover of books, and for you - lovers (or will be lovers if I get the best of you!) of books. Let these thoughts give you something to think about today. You must read! Books will change your life. You just don't know which ones will connect, but don't ever say you're not a reader - you just haven't found the author out there that you read and say, "Oh, my goodness, that's exactly what I think." - don't stop the search for that connection. When you find this gift, you will be hooked for life to that author, to the books that author recommends, and to the books those authors recommend. Just keep searching for the first one that becomes YOU! And - have a great week! Appreciate the little gifts from our Creator this first day of November. Thank you for your encouragement & for letting me send you these little notes! Susan
Helluo librorum A glutton for books (in Latin).
Winston Churchhill, 1874-1965: If you cannot read all your books, at any rate...peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them be your acquaintances.
Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887: Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Anthony Trollope, 1815-1882: This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.
Jane Austen, 1775-1817: ...it is very well worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it.
Cicero, 106-43 B.C. Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goes out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.
C.S. Lewis: You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
Lord Byron, 1788-1824: But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Book by Book by Michael Dirda
March 27, 2008 Newsletter
A personal library is not a collection of odd volumes: It is the outward representation of one's inner life, a mirror of the soul, the past spread out before your eyes. To pass from book to book to book is to abolish time, to connect the child rapt between the wonders of Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire with the middle-aged man puzzled about the cosmology of Plato's Timaeus. They are one. A line of poetry can lead you through half a library and most of a life. A random note may generate an entire symphony. For a real reader to do without a personal library would be like throwing away a time machine, like waking up an amnesiac, like ceasing to dream.
Sorrows of a book reviewer: when otherwise charming and obviously well-to-do-Washington lawyers and bureaucrats admit that they don't take time to read books...The pits: when you realize that nearly everything you care about is irrelevant or utterly unimportant to most of the people who open the Washington Post. I was labeled this week in a derogatory statement, "a bookworm" and was offended, until I read another line by this same author...
* Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda (April 17, 2008 Newsletter)
Pleasures of a book reviewer: to open a book tentatively, with indifference even, and to find oneself yet again in thrall - to a writer's prose, to a thriller's plot, to a thinker's mind. Let the whole wide world crumble, so long as I can read another page. And then another after that. And then a hundred more. Don't you love that paragraph?!?!?! I guess I am a bookworm! With pride!
Exerpt from September 20, 2007 Newsletter (C.S. Lewis)
"Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me. I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented.... In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself, and am never more myself than when I do." C.S. Lewis
August 16, 2007 Newsletter
(Referring to The Little Princess by Frances Burnett & The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather)
I have always loved those two little sections of this daunting novel. What I especially believe is that with all of the access we have now to books any of us can travel - any of us can dream - any of us can think outside of our busy over-scheduled life. We all just need a place. A place that we can be Thea. A place where we find our thoughts - our place to dream. This could be a garden, this could be at the kitchen sink (surrouded by little things you love), this could be under your favorite quilt. The most important idea here is to make yourself have a place that is all your own. You and your dreams. You and your books. Never say you don't have time to read - you must make the time, for then you will have an entirely separate existence from your reality - an existence of places and new thoughts from authors that put into words what you didn't even realize that you were thinking - where you say, "Oh, yes!!! That is exactly what I desire, or that I think, or that I feel..." - May we never stop desiring or dreaming or wanting to know more and more. Books! You have to keep trying - you just never know when one will change your life!!! And with that (smile) - I'll say to you - have a week where you make a memory (even in your own head). Find ways to take on your life with passion. Don't settle for only routine. At the end of routine - when you stop in your tracks, begin to think again, to desire, to make friends with your thoughts! May God bless your week. May he give you the strength to face whatever comes into your path.
Exerpt from Susan's writings - June 28, 2007 Newsletter
It amazes me how in one moment I can purchase a book, then absolutely connect with the writer! One "nirvana" for me is to realize I'm loving a book, then go to the front of the book where other writings are listed by the author - and to see a long list. Oh, that is heaven! To know that when the book I'm on is finished - I am just beginning to tap the surface!! After writing last week on Gift from the Sea I ordered all else I could get by Anne Lindberg. I am engrossed in her letters and diaries. There are five volumes!!! Good bye War and Peace (I never made it past page one!) - I have found my gift for this summer!!! Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries & Letters 1929-1932.
For me to find an author that I so connect with is one of the priceless moments of loving to read. Like realizing all of a sudden that you have made a dear friend. The process isn't thought out, just suddenly, you suddenly realize, "Oh, my goodness - I can't believe how much I love this person!!!" I realize that I had my own thoughts, yet the thoughts had only been at the point of being spun in my head, but not yet solidified into an actual thought, then when I read her entries, I could exclaim to myself, "Oh, yes!!! That's exactly what I think! - yet I had never actually thought through to think it yet!"
Exerpts from Susan in June 7, 2007 Newsletter
I encourage you again, look through the "classics" at any store you're in (this is where you'll fall in love with used bookstores!!! Classics marked by someone before you with the smell of an old store - that is a heavenly smell/scene to me!) They can be daunting, I agree with you. They can be boring, I agree with you there, too. BUT - what I believe most of you are yet to find out - they can change your life. You will find characters when you least expect it, that are YOU - where you say, "Oh, yes - I know!" - for authors have written what you haven't even realized you have thought. These are the moments of great satisfaction, where you read what defines you, what changes you. If you do not begin - you will never come to this point. There are many many many books where I haven't gotten past the first few chapters. I don't usually continue with them, for the sake "of wisely spending my money - I must then finish the book." I realize if I have a million to choose from, I'd better put that one down and spend another $10 and try again!!!!! You can not read these books if you get easily upset by those without your exact beliefs or morals. If you close books off for this reason, you will never open your mind to understanding those that think differently than you, therefore closing off major avenue of thought for yourself.
Exerpts from Susan's May 10, 2007 Newsletter.
As you have probably picked up on by now, I absolutely love to read. I get up in the morning and read, I read when I have a few minutes of commercials, I read while I watch the kids outside, I read before bed. So, for those of you that say, "I just don't have time to read," let me be the first to tell you - just leave behind some of those little piddly things you do to organize and grab a book. You can do quick cleaning, but your mind will appreciate that you're giving it something to ponder the next day as you do your "life!"
This week I once again realized the power of choosing what we put into our heads, and the power of choosing who we spend our time with. It just never ceases to amaze me the power of my aquaintances in my day in affecting my disposition and outlook of life in general for the rest of that day.
August 31, 2006 Newsletter
How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlin
This week I read a great little book (I ordered 50 for all of you to claim!) It is called How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen (New York Times Columnist). She states,
"In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself...I felt that I existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books! Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "t will make your hours pleasant as long as you live." Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort - God, food, family, friends - reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I though of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in that chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth."
The book is just so good! Then at the end she makes various lists...
1. 10 Big Thick Wonderful Books that Could Take you a Whole Summer to Read (but aren't beach books)
2. 10 Nonfiction Books That Help Us Understand the World
3. 10 Books that Will Help a Teenager Feel More Human
4. 10 Books I Would Save in a Fire (If I Could Only 10)
5. 10 Books for a Girl Who is Full of Beans (or Ought to Be)
6. 10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like to Find in a Summer Rental
7. 10 Books Recommended by a Really Good Elementary School Librarian
8. 10 Good Book-Club Selections
9. 10 Modern Novels That Made Me Proud to be a Writer
10. 10 of the Books My Exceptionally Well Read Friend Ben Says He's Taken the Most From
11. 10 Books I Just Love to Read, and Always Will
I'm going to try to collect these lists for you to peruse through when you come in the store! (peruse is a fun word to use!)
