Amen to that.

The other day I read something spectacular about the act of reading. It was this:

"That's the thing about books. They're alive on their own terms. Reading is like travelling with an argumentative, unpredictable good friend. It's an endless open exchange." (p. 2.)

I LOVE that. It's perfect. And I love that it's not only about books OR reading; it's about the two of them together. And the incongruity of "argumentative" and "unpredictable" and "good." Perfect. The line comes in Ali Smith's introduction to a new literature anthology titled (again perfectly) The Book Lover, which is a collection of poems and short excerpts from the literature and authors that have influenced Smith (herself an author--her latest collection of stories, The First Person, is an interesting book) over the years. Represented here you'll find glimpses of Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood, Zora Neale Hurston, John Keats, Grace Paley, Colette, Cynthia Ozick, John Donne, A.M Homes, Thomas Hardy, William Blake, Joyce Carol Oates and many, many more. Smith is a British author, and I don't know if that's the reason, but there are a great many names in her collection that I don't recognize at all...which is also kind of exciting.

But I'll admit it. The thing I've enjoyed most so far about this collection is Smith's introduction, and that fabulous line about reading.

I thought that would probably be it for the week, as far as fantastic quotes about reading went. But then I was perusing an article about the Amazon Kindle, by Sven Birkerts, at the Atlantic (link via Fimoculous), and I came across another one:

"I’m not blind to the unwieldiness of the book, or to the cumbersome systems we must maintain to accommodate it—the vast libraries and complicated filing systems. But these structures evolved over centuries in ways that map our collective endeavor to understand and express our world. The book is part of a system. And that system stands for the labor and taxonomy of human understanding, and to touch a book is to touch that system, however lightly."

Okay, that one's more about books. But I can't help it. I love reading...but I love reading books more. Either way, though, it's been a fabulous week for reading about reading.

Comments

[Venta]

I love the Birkerts' quote!!! By itself and as a tool as an academic librarian. I work with an intro to college class, and I'll be using that quote from now on even if it excites me way more than any of the 18 old kids sitting in front of me!

[Brian]

Christopher over at our blog wrote about the Birkerts article, too. I myself am trying to come around to the new technology with the understanding that books, as we know them, will *not* disappear. And your first quote is just why I don't want that to happen: I don't want a book to become a discussion space, as I like that argumentative friend and the one on one "conversations" we have when I read a book. The idea of embedding books with links and comments... won't the authors, the ones we love and rely upon, lose their integrity with this new creation? That's my concern.

[Citizen Reader]

Venta,
Yes, the 18-year-olds may not thrill to this sort of thing the way we do. But some of them might--especially in a few years or so. The whole article was very interesting, even though I'm not typically a huge Birkerts fan.

Brian:
All fair points about author integrity. I'm afraid you're coming at this thing from a much more intellectual point of view than I am; I simply don't want to cough up hundreds of dollars to Amazon for a new piece of technology that I'll just need to update in a couple of years anyway (if that). Not to mention all the Kindle books they want me to pay $10 for that I'll lose when I get the new new Kindle, etc., etc., ad infinitum. I'm grouchy about technology that way, because I'm old enough to have learned that the more advanced everything gets, the harder it is to access, the more expensive it is, and the longer it takes. Just think about it--sure, we think everything is faster and better, but is it? I just don't know about that.

And I TOTALLY agree with your one-on-one perspective. That's the best part about the little closed system of me and a book (and that book's author). I would really miss that.

If anyone wants to read Christopher's post about the Kindle over at Survival of the Book, here it is:
http://booksurvival.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-dont-want-kindle.html

I'd recommend it!