To be a buyer, a chooser of books!

Fa-So-La-La

(virtual M&M's for the title!)

This is a happy day indeed. And why, you ask? Because today I signed my name inside the front of a new book! Dallas has been blessed by yet another sizeable Barnes & Noble, to which we made pilgrimage today. I thought the occasion just right for purchasing a book-- a good way to kick off my relationship with the new bookstore. So after evading helpful salespeople and wading through sloughs of chick lit, I found just the kind of book that a person such as myself would enjoy reading-- Villette, by Charlotte Bronte.

Jane Eyre is one of my favoritest of favorites, so I have long wanted to move further up and further in the realm of Bronte. After scrutinizing the available choices (Shirly and The Professer were the other two-- if any of the Beehive Faithful know anything about either of these, I would appreciate the information), I picked Villette because many people have said they love it, including George Elliot, and it is long. Every now and then I get in the mood for a really, reaaaaally long novel. Perhaps during one of these sprees I should muster the courage to start Middlemarch, speaking of George Elliot-- a daunting undertaking. But anyway, my copy (delightful words!) of Villette is plummy-purple, which I thought was a very Bronte-ish colour. It is the kind of paperback that feels cool and smooth in your hands, and it has a good illustration on the front, creamy paper, and a gracious, readable font. All these things are very, very important, you see. I am dying to buy the Betsy Tacey and Tib books, but I refuse, because I am head over heels in love with the old hardbacks at the library and after reading them that way, the cheaply-printed current edition is just fundamentally wrong. Why don't publishers just republish the old editions? They would sell like hotcakes. I know I'd buy 'em. But then they didn't ask my advise. They almost never do, unfortunately.

So I have been thinking about the joys of reading, living with, and purchasing books. Of all inventions I think they are the most miraculous. I can think of no other, except, perhaps, the wheel, that has done even half of what the book has done for the world..

Living with books is an amazing thing. They make the very air of a house different-- fertile and full. They do the same thing to the mind. My head is full of people I have never met, places I have never seen, thoughts I would never have thought on my own, things I will never experience, because many wise people over many ages wrote down the things closest to their hearts. They have taken the trouble to give me a part of them, and for that I shall ever be grateful.

Thank the Lord for people who will write beautifully and correctly what they know and feel of the world. God bless the writers!