I’ve come across this article when skimming the newsfeed on
Facebook. It’s kind of a quick overview of some fantastic bookstores around
Tokyo, with quite a few wonderful images and descriptions of those stores
appealingly teeming with all kinds of books which may work up any reader into a
big thrill.
And somewhere in the text, the author gives a brief mention
of the wrapping of books in covers to preserve books in mint condition and,
interestingly enough, to maintain privacy, or, in other words, to wrap their
minds from some looking into. I myself also have a habit of hiding the book
front covers by facing them down, not deriving from an unassuming manner or the
likes, just because I have a conviction that books read you and tell everybody
who you are. Hence I want to wrap my mind up, prevent it from leaking through
my books, just like Japanese people as aforementioned.
Yet I enjoy getting some glimpse of books in people’s hands,
trying to catch a book title, whenever seeing somebody reading. That’s also my
habit when, once in a while, taking some stroll at some bookstores. Going to
bookstores isn’t simply going to buy books and waddling back home, but also
about watching people buying books, overhearing people talking about books. In
this kind of isolation from the bustling crowds and actitvities outside, one
may find the strangely tacit connectedness with people, with some mysteriously
ineffable meaning. That feeling is somewhat a kind of daily detox for me,
albeit fleetingly, yet sufficiently.
Umberto Eco once said, it’s a fabulous privilege
as we read because we are living many lives concomitantly. I rephrase that idea
a little bit, by reading books and in touch with books we just live one life,
but with many chances of daily detox, and then it’s truly one life.
No comments:
Post a Comment