I am a person of, shall we say, alternative beliefs. I am also a person who sets a lot in store in books, being of the opinion that the gain of knowledge via books not only improves one but is essential for one’s wellbeing. Why is it then, that I find myself in the “Mind, Soul and Spirit” section of Waterstones looking with contempt at titles such as “How to Be A Real Witch”, “100 spells for every occasion”? I can’t help feeling that if you need to read a book about it, you’ve missed the point.
On the subject of books, I’m reading Stephen Fry’s The Liar at the moment which follows a Public School boy at Cambridge in the 1970’s. An unusual book – it’s written in Fry’s high brow style that should tax the brain and yet I’m already over a third of the way through it. The relevant point for this blog entry is one character’s opinions of books. He believes books are not to be worshiped or revered or collected. Words yes, books themselves, no. A 1st edition should have no more value than a 32nd edition – the words within them are what’s important. And I look at my bookcase full of the complete works of Terry Practchett, the Lord of the Ring and His Dark Materials trilogies, Hitchhikers, a large Star Trek collection plus one off copies of almost every book I have ever owned… and I wonder which I value – the knowledge or the binding? Luckily I have an excuse – the complete lack of a functional memory requires me to keep my books in order to reread them and relearn that which I already knew.