Be seen reading a book
by Marie Marshall
Be seen reading a book wherever you go. No, not thumbing a hand-held device, reading an actual book. Be seen to laugh, to smile, to frown; be heard to catch your breath. Take out a pencil and make marginal notes in your own, personal shorthand. Use a bookmark, maybe one main one in stiff card or leather, along with supplementary markers torn from a notepad, maybe a brightly-coloured index tab or two which lead to a favourite or important passage neatly underlined. Take the book everywhere. Let people hear you chuckling and exclaiming even during a comfort break; interrupt your lunchtime apple to read out passages to colleagues; hold your book high whilst sitting on the bus or in the park; when at rest on the summit of a newly-climbed mountain, whip out a paperback from your pocket.
No, this is not an exercise in Luddism. The hand-held device is here to stay. It is an exercise in celebrating what must be the most important technological advance of the past thousand years – print. So much has now been committed to ink on paper. Even though the day of the hand-held device has come, the new literature that has appeared only in a form that can be consumed on such a device is infinitesimal compared to the vast canon of the already-published.
The printer’s boast was always this: that once something is published in print then it cannot be retracted. If you lie then your lie is nailed forever; if you tell the truth it shines forever. A pomposity, maybe, but do the book thing anyway. For me. You know you want to.
And on no account ever refer to it as ‘hard copy’.
__________
I have just finished what I think is my final input into the selection of poems submitted to The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes and am awaiting eagerly a sight of what the final book may look like.
Meanwhile it is time to turn my attention to another possible editing project, this time the work of a single poet. I will keep you posted…
Marie Marshall 
I have an e-reader. But I will never stop reading books. I love the feel of a book in my hands. I love to turn pages. My e-reader will never replace my books.
I love the sound a book makes when I fan the corner of the pages with my thumb. I love the little vibrations against the roughness of my fingerprints. I love the way that the fanning checks itself at differences in pressure, or because the book’s spine is weakened from use and there are minute differences in the reach of each page. I love the smell of a book. A book is such a physical thing, it has presence, it is a sculpture, a little monument. From the moment it is printed, it becomes archaeology.
M
So well said!
Absolutely! I’m going to share this.
Please feel free to do so, Angelique.
M
Thanks! I’ve posted it on my FB wall; it’s already gotten several likes and comments. If you want the link, let me know.
Yes, please do let me have the link. Thank you.
M
Hmm, now that I think about it, you might not have access b/c it’s on my FB wall. I’m posting it on my FB author page. Here’s the link to that! 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angélique-Jamail-Author/207927972590011
I love watching someone’s face on a train or bus as they read a book – there’s a whole life in their expressions sometimes….
I know what you mean. But someone with a tablet or a mobile phone always looks as though they could not, if their life and sanity depended on it, sigh, put it down, and gaze into the distance.