Status Updates From Stories of Books and Libraries

In novels, imagination is equated with empathy;we can’t experience all that others have gone through, but we can understand even the most monstrous individuals in works of fiction.A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals.Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels – the biggest sin is to be blind to others’ problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.

And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of collectors? It is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, 'And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?' 'Not one-tenth of them. I don't suppose your use your Sèvres china every day?'
(Walter Benjamin)

What does the name of an author on the jacket matter?Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now.Who knows which books from our period will be saved,and who knows which authors’ names will be remembered?Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as the epic of Gilgamesh; other author’s names will still be well known,but none of their works will survive, as Socrates.

I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people’s thoughts. I dream away my life in other’s speculations. I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.

(Charles Lamb, 1822)

Beautiful books that I used to read, beautiful books that I left unread, warm covering of the walls of my home, variegated tapestry whose hidden design rejoiced my initiated eyes. It was from them I learned, long before the age for love, that love is complicated, tyrannical and even burdensome, since my mother grudged the prominence they gave it.

(Colette, My mother and her books, 1922)

When we have books it is like spring with us; when the winter frames are taken out and for the first time we can open the windows as we like.

To read is to withdraw. To make oneself unavailable.

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

(From 'The uncommon reader', Alan Bennett)

It is evening. The reading room grows dark. The immobile figures sitting at the tables are a mix of fatigue, thirst for knowledge, ambition.

Outside the wide windows soft snow is drifting. Nearby, on the Nevsky Prospekt, life is blossoming. Far away, in the Carpathian Mountains, blood is flowing.
C'est la vie.

(Isaac Babel, The public library, 1916)

One feels right away that this is the kingdom of books. People working at the library commune with books, with the life reflected in them, and so become almost reflections of real-life human beings.

(Isaac Babel, The public library, 1916)

The novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park.

She sat on the river bank,bare feet tucked sideways,one arm cradling a book,the other outstretched to pluck -as if to aid her concentration- at blades of grass.Her face remained pale,for it was always in the shadow,bent over her book.Etta read steadily on - her straight, pale hair hanging forward as if to seclude her,to screen her from the curious eyes of passers-by - shaken by passions of the imagination as she was.