An Ode to Books....

Thomas Carlyle once said, “After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.” No matter if Mr. Carlyle said these words during the Victorian era, but they still ring true in this age as well.

To my mind, there is no greater joy, no more divine bliss, than to have a book to read. There are good books, there are great books, and there are books which simply are unmentionable except as expletives. And yet, despite all this, each and every book has a story to tell, no matter how drab or dull it may seem. In this respect, books are like people; you have interesting people, beautiful people, charming people, boring people, obnoxious people, dull people et al. You deal with each one of them in a different manner, but you deal with every one of them, sine prejudice.

I have a habit of buying the books that I read. I find it most cumbersome to read a book and then return it to a library. The joy of reading a book is not so much in breaking the freshness of the print, as in revisiting the text, like one goes back to an old friend. One cannot take such liberties with borrowed books; it’s somewhat scandalous to think so.

Of late, I have spending a lot of money on books, to the extent that my parents are wont to boast that my salary seems dedicated to buying books and no more. I don’t find it a distressing thought; come to think of it, I recollect having read that when a habit begins to cost money, it’s called a hobby. So, buying books would be my hobby, though not one which I can list down in my curriculum vitae.

It is said that people don’t find the time to read books nowadays. I don’t know where the statisticians quoting these ‘facts’ are finding their data, but looking at the crowds in the local book stores and the bags of books that they buy, I wonder why they must buy them, if not to read them. Bibliophiles are, or rather have never been an endangered species. Au contraire, they are a flourishing breed; if not more overt, they are certainly more discriminating in their choices.

Whatever this may mean, I only see a good future for books, irrespective of distractions like television, the computer (read the Internet and e-books) and video games. After all, In the end, you can’t take a computer to bed, or snuggle into a comfy chair with a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day with a television in hand.