The Library of Unrequited Love. This was a recommended by a dear friend of our Book club as a cozy weekend read. We were choosing short books to read together, and I wasn't sure of what this one was exactly, hardly some 100 pages, I started this on a Friday night, after the kids were put to sleep, and I was done with my chores and my mood swings, and the last notification sound died away, and what a magical thing this book was? I was totally a different person as I read and reread each phrase, sentence, again and again tasting them, a mood lifter this was.
“I prefer the company of books. When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train of thought and you can accompany each other for weeks on end.”
It was a great sense of oneness that came over me while reading this lovely monologue of a middle-aged (female) librarian. The setting is a library in France and the librarian starts a conversation, more a monologue, with a reader who had spent his previous night there.
"Book and reader, if they meet up at the right moment, it can make sparks fly, set you alight, change your life. It can, I promise you."
The process used in the classification of the books, the manual discretion that is used in certain cases, the drastic misuse of this discretion in certain cases by certain authorities, political subjects before and after the (French) Revolution, prominent writers of France and their (devious) other side, there are many subjects she touches that basically draw up the feelings and emotions of Readers in general.
How often we find solace in discussing our favorite book or author. How often we laugh hilariously with a I knew that was coming or shocked immensely with a I didn't expect you of all people to do that, how could you? while reading our favorite authors. How often some friendly discussions become steamy because your friend's perspective was different from yours? In fact I rarely recommend a book that touched me emotionally because ... because ... let me say it aloud, I can't take a negative word about a book I love, but sometimes I don't exhibit it, and just be mute, but she punches me for this too with a,
“People apologize too much, everyone's afraid of giving offence and it leads to literature being written for babies. Low-brow rubbish. That's not the way to become an adult.”
Well... It's a thug/tough life being a Reader... :D
“I prefer the company of books. When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train of thought and you can accompany each other for weeks on end.”
It was a great sense of oneness that came over me while reading this lovely monologue of a middle-aged (female) librarian. The setting is a library in France and the librarian starts a conversation, more a monologue, with a reader who had spent his previous night there.
"Book and reader, if they meet up at the right moment, it can make sparks fly, set you alight, change your life. It can, I promise you."
The process used in the classification of the books, the manual discretion that is used in certain cases, the drastic misuse of this discretion in certain cases by certain authorities, political subjects before and after the (French) Revolution, prominent writers of France and their (devious) other side, there are many subjects she touches that basically draw up the feelings and emotions of Readers in general.
How often we find solace in discussing our favorite book or author. How often we laugh hilariously with a I knew that was coming or shocked immensely with a I didn't expect you of all people to do that, how could you? while reading our favorite authors. How often some friendly discussions become steamy because your friend's perspective was different from yours? In fact I rarely recommend a book that touched me emotionally because ... because ... let me say it aloud, I can't take a negative word about a book I love, but sometimes I don't exhibit it, and just be mute, but she punches me for this too with a,
“People apologize too much, everyone's afraid of giving offence and it leads to literature being written for babies. Low-brow rubbish. That's not the way to become an adult.”
Well... It's a thug/tough life being a Reader... :D
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