Some Thoughts on Books

Despite my best efforts, I got bored after leafing through pages of scientific jargon about the Thermohaline Circulation and its effects on climate change. My mind travelled, and I daydreamed about reading, in general...

Just how many books does one need to have read in order to become well-read? 100? 500?

How many volumes do you need to own in order to qualify as a member of that prestigious circle of the intelletual elite, the intelligentsia?

And wouldn't it be a poor thing if the only reason one read was to "belong" to this particular social circle? I've met a couple, and I don't think I'd jive with such an exclusive group. Some tend to spend so much of their time with their heads stuck in books, living in the abstract... and forget to apply the noble virtues they read about in real life. What's the point in reading, then?

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I used to love reading, and have recently discovered anew the joys of losing myself in a book after taking a seven year hiatus or so from my book worm status. Sadly... no matter how quickly I try to speed through books or how many I try to finish given limited free time, nothing will ever bring back those seven years of lost time. I mourn for all the knowledge and wisdom I could have gotten from those tomes that I let slip past.

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Why read? Here's an interesting article.

I used to read for pleasure. Now, I still do. But I try to do it with discernment. After all, it's more of a personal crusade for self-improvement now, but not only for my sake. From a Christian viewpoint, we are all called to improve our minds, to further be of service to Him. :)

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Came across this interesting poem by Australian poet Zora Bernice May Cross (1890-1964). Makes for an interesting epitaph, no?

And oh. It's aptly entitled BOOKS.

"Oh! Bury me in books when I am dead,
Fair quarto leaves of ivory and gold,
And silk octavos, bound in brown and red,
That tales of love and chivalry unfold.
Heap me in volumes of fine vellum wrought,
Creamed with the close content of silent speech;
Wrap me in sapphire tapestries of thought
From some old epic out of common reach.
I would my shroud were verse-embroidered too---
Your verse for preference—in starry stitch,
And powdered o’er with rhymes that poets woo,
Breathing dream-lyrics in moon-measures rich.
Night holds me with a horror of the grave
That knows not poetry, nor song, nor you;
Nor leaves of love that down the ages weave
Romance and fire in burnished cloths of blue.
Oh, bury me in books, and I’ll not mind
The cold, slow worms that coil around my head;
Since my lone soul may turn the page and find
The lines you wrote to me, when I am dead."

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I'm looking forward to the end of the sem... when I can have a few days of doing nothing but leaf through my pile of books, while munching on Toblerone and sipping coffee mixed with generous spoonfuls of Hazelnut Coffeemate. :)