Archive for the ‘nook’ Tag
I consider myself to be an avid reader, but many friends and family consider me an obsessive reader. I admit to reading a lot, but that obsessive description seems a little much. I’ve been an avid reader of just about everything starting at about age 4 and I’ve never lost my love of reading and books. I thought with the advent of the Kindle and the Nook and other electronic reading devices I’d be in heaven. What I didn’t count on was missing the feel of the books in my hands, their smell, turning the pages, and just how contented those actions made me feel. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle and I read it every day but it’s just not the same. Unfortunately for me I gave away a lot of my most favorite books when I bought the Kindle initially. Now I find myself looking to replace many of those books so I can sit on a quiet deck on a summer day and spend time reading my old friends. Today’s blog will be a few historical facts about books. Enjoy.
- The art of printing was born with the first printed book, the Gutenberg Bible, and considered by many as the most beautiful book ever produced. 300 copies were printed, nearly 1300 pages each, 42 lines in Latin to the page. The Gutenberg Bibles remain among the most value books in the world.
- Charles Darwin believes that the proposed first printing of this book The Origin of Species would be too large: 1250 copies. But the edition was sold out the very first day of its publication.
- In 1814, when George Byron’s poem The Corsair was published, 30,000 copies were sold in a single day.
- Kepler’s story Somnium, published after his death in 1630, is the first piece of authentic science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, because it was the first to try to describe the lunar surface as it really was.
- The first collection of Aesop’s animal fables was put together 200 years after his death and included many that originated long after the Greek slave from Africa had departed this world.
- Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) – a biblical scholar, professor of Oriental and Greek literature, and compiler of a Greek and Hebrew lexicon – wrote the exquisitely simple and easily remembered “Visit from St. Nicholas”: Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house . . .
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
Alan Bennett
Probably my favorite pass time is reading. If I have a free moment I almost always have a book with me or nearby to pick up and read. It’s been this way since I was ten years old when as I was walking home from school one afternoon and saw a box of books sitting at the end of a neighbors driveway for trash pickup. I stopped for a few minutes and began looking through them. Up until that time I’d been reading the occasional Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback of which there were many. They were a quick and easy read for a young kid and I really enjoyed them. I can’t even guess how much of my meager allowance went towards those books.
As I continued to scrounge through the box I found one that caught my eye. It was an old copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I stuck the book into my bag, took it home, and relished every word in it. I sailed around the world with Captain Nemo on the Nautilus and deep sea dived in every ocean with his crew. I kept that book for many years but unfortunately while I was away serving my country it was discarded by my mother with most of my other books.
I’m reading more now than ever before but things are changing dramatically. With the advent of the Kindles and Nooks and the thousands of available ebooks it’s hard to keep up at times. As much as I love my Kindle, Nook, and IPad I can’t completely switch over from reading real actual books. I’ve really tried hard to make the change completely to digital but it’s seems impossible for me. When I read to relax the process of reading an actual book gives me great comfort.
I’ve always given my business to those small discount book stores that can be found if you really want to search them out. Every three or four weeks I visit a small one near my home to bring back books, get a credit, and buy another bag full. After my visit last week I find myself feeling very sorry for the proprietor. We’ve become friends over the years through our mutual love of books. He’s a former reference book author with many titles to his name and has settled in for the last few years of his working life to run his bookstore. He fears that the digital revolution in reading will eventually put him out of business and has resigned himself to that fact. He’d planned to run his store after retirement but that no longer seems a valid option.
I hope he’s wrong but that’s just nostalgia talking. I can’t imagine sitting with a young child on my knee and reading to him or her from a Kindle. The act of touching a book, turning the pages, and introducing a young child to millions of new experiences is the ultimate gift and I look forward to doing just that for my better-half’s new grand child. My better-half while not much of a reader has kept every children’s book she ever purchased for her kids who are all grown and gone. She understands the importance of those precious moments she shared with each of them as she read to them. We have a huge library of children’s books which have been stored for many years in the attic in anticipation of the expected grand children. They were unpacked and dusted off soon after her daughter announced her pregnancy last year.
I hope that books survive these modern day changes and in all honesty I’m not sure they will. Maybe it’s just me refusing to accept change. The best thing I can do is to pass my love of books and reading on to the new generations and hope they do the same with their children and grand children. If that happens then books will continue to survive and be enjoyed by many more generations of readers.
We can only hope!
everyuselessthing.com 