Sunday, November 9, 2008

On books

Lady who sends me stuff – that would be my wife – sends me a nice little essay by Theodore Dalrymple on books and bookstores. In part:
Books, even without association with anyone known, have an almost sacred quality in any case: it is necessary only to imagine someone ripping the pages out of a cheap and trashy airport novel one by one to prove to oneself that this is so. If we saw someone doing it, we should be shudder, and think him a barbarian, no matter the nature of the book. The horror aroused by book burnings is independent of the quality of the books actually burnt.

Read it all here. It's a nice piece of writing.

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