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 Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:50 pm Post subject: One Rolling Stone's tale of reading to his kids |
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This is from the 1995 coffee-table book "At Home With Books: How
Booklovers Live with and Care for their Libraries" by Estelle Ellis,
Caroline Seebohm, and Chritopher Simon Sykes.
"Keith, an only child, was encouraged by his parents to read, and now
passes that encouragement on to his children. 'I was living in
Switzerland and used to read to my son. But there were not many
English books so I had to buy French ones. I taught myself the
language by making it up from looking at the pictures. My son would
say, "Are you sure that's what happened, Dad?" Now my children always
want me to make up the stories. For instance, we have a book about
cats and the kids want me to say what the cats are saying in the
pictures.'
"Mr. Richards's dependence on books became acute once he became part
of the Rolling Stones band. 'On planes it's awful not ot have
something to read......I can read anything except a book with pages
missing.' ......No one, not even the children, can walk in on Dad when
he's in his library."
Other fascinating parts of the book include the chapter "Hay-0n-Wye -
Booktown," about a town on the Welsh border "with more bookshops than
pubs" (another such booktown is Stillwater, on the Wisconsin/Minnesota
border); a chapter on book conservation, with a photo of a multipiece
"first aid" kit; a chapter on damage prevention as opposed to repair;
a quote from the head of the London Library ("if the book were
invented today....it would be hailed as a miracle of technology. It
doesn't need batteries, you can scan it quickly, carry it in your
jeans. There is no intermediate technology except....glasses. It would
be a brave man who digitized 18 million books and then burned them");
and finally, a very funny excerpt from Roger Rosenblatt's 1994 one-man
show, "Bibliomania."
Excerpts
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,921195,00.html
Can the borrowers be thwarted? There are attempts. Some hopefuls glue
EX LIBRIS stickers to the inside covers (clever drawings of animals
wearing glasses, and so forth)—as if the presence of Latin and the
imprint of a name were so formidable as to reverse a motor reflex. It
never works. One might try slipping false jackets on one's books—a
cover for The Secret Agent disguising Utility Rates in Ottawa: A
Woman's View......
Of all the terrifying circumstances to which one's home is vulnerable,
nothing equals that of a guest who stares straight at one's
bookshelves. It is not the judgmental possibility that is frightening:
the fact that one's sense of discrimination is exposed by his books.
Indeed, most people would much prefer to see the guest first scan,
then peer and turn away in boredom or disapproval. Alas, too often the
eyes, dark with calculation, shift from title to title as from girl to
girl in an overheated dance hall. Nor is that the worst. It is when
those eyes stop moving that the heart too stops. The guest's body
twitches; his hand floats up to where his eyes have led it. There is
nothing to be done. You freeze. He smiles. You hear the question even
as it forms:"Would you mind if I borrowed this book?"
(end)
Lenona. |
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