Book

A Book
by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Once, when I was a child my grandmother asked me to visit her. This was an unusual request, because she never seemed to pay much attention to us children. Therefore I felt quite nervous when I entered her house. I found her holding a thin brown parcel in her hands. “I’ll give that to you” she said, “it is one of my most precious possessions! Take care!” I saw a faint smile on her face when I murmured: “Thanks”.

The parcel contained a shabby book which told the story of an old enchanted garden. Only two children found the hidden way in, enjoyed its beauty and unveiled its secrets. For me it was the most wonderful book of the world.

Meanwhile the book has got a special place on our bookshelf. And in a few years I’ll ask my little grandniece to visit me. Then I’ll wait for her holding a thin brown parcel in my hands.

I’m a reader. For me living in a world without books would be like living in a dessert. So it goes without saying, that I decided to write about an invention that had great influence on printing and distribution of books: The paperback.
Nobody knows who invented paperbacks. Was it Penguin (Great Britain), Simon & Schuster (USA) or somebody else somewhere else in the world? In Germany after World War Two, when paper was very rare, Rowohlts Publishing House printed books like newspapers using the rotation technique. Since then the technique has changed again, but in Germany the brand name “rororo” remained as a synonym for paperback.
The advantages of paperbacks are obvious, they are affordable and they can easily be taken everywhere. You can put them into your pocket and that’s it what I do. So I am able to read whenever I have to kill time and if I finish a book there is always another one, waiting to be placed in my pocket.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

(Salman Rushdie)

People have predicted that in the future, we'll be able to store a person's thoughts, personality, or soul in a modular unit that can be slotted into a computer and accessed at will. What they don't realize is that those storage cells have been in existence for years. The storage cells are books; the computer is the human brain.

The most powerful invention must surely be the book. If not the form, the idea that information could be stored and shared independent of a single person's memory.

'It's like a book to me,' he said--'the only book I ever learned to read; and many an old story it tells me.'

No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all.

»Books are a world in themselves, but they are not the whole world...« (Hazlitt). I always used to admire this quote, but who would want the whole world these days (fragmented and unwholesome as it is) – and what if the best escape is still into the world of letters?