Sunday, June 1, 2008

On Loving Books

My dinner companion tonight was a fascinating article about one man's book collection. Here are a few snippets...

"I have a large library by most normal standards. Seemingly I've arranged my life in order to acquire as many books as possible."

"Primarily, though, books function as a kind of external hard drive for my mind--my brain isn't big enough to do all the things it wants or needs to do without help."

"But I would very much miss books as material objects were they to disappear. The tactility of books assists my memory, for one thing. I can't remember the quote I'm searching for, or maybe even the title of the work that contains it, but I can remember that the book is green, that the margins are unusually wide, and that the quote lies two-thirds of the way down a right-hand page."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's pretty much how I find anything I've lost...not just book quotes.