The joy of books

Wednesday, December 30th., Chiltern Court, London.

This period between Xmas and New Year is perfect for attending to one's books. So today, returning from some shopping I went into my too-small library and began to arrange my books. They were in need of arrangement. They always are. I blew on some of the pathetic neglected things; I dusted others and I moved some scores of them to and fro in the room. Time passed - delightfully!

A few of the books I came upon I could not remember having bought. Imagine forgetting the exact circumstances in which one has come to own a book! One or two I did not even know that I possessed; and their inexplicable forlorn presence on my shelves shocked me with surprised joy, but also with shame. And so I tended them as I might have tended a lost dog, and tried to convince them that they were not masterless, that they aroused my warm interest, and that they had a genuine mission in my life. I went so far as to read pages of some of them, here and there. How exciting! How disturbing to think that those now printed words emerged from the mind of some earnest, bursting author, two thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, fifty years ago. Immortal in our sense of that term. Giving glimpses into wonderful minds long since passed away.

The majority of books in the majority of libraries lie utterly idle, like railway wagons in sidings. They await the reader and the man who ought to read them never glances at them. What is the remedy for this deplorable state of affairs? Surely no man can read all his books all of the time. Of course not. But every bookman can allot a certain regular amount of leisure to cultivating at least an acquaintance with books which he has not read and probably will never be able to read through. A lot of knowledge can be very pleasurably obtained by an hours miscellaneous browsing twice or thrice a week. Go to your books; pick one out at random, look into it ... and so on. The process is rather like consciously opening one's eyes and mind to the sights and sounds of a familiar walk, which normally pass unnoticed. No higher praise of it is necessary. After an hour, or even half an hour of the exercise you will be conscious of stimulation.

I was summoned back to the world by a call to eat, not to be denied. But tomorrow I shall attend again to my books.