‘When you insult or injure the unfortunate or the unhappy, you insult Christ Himself and He will not forget, for they are His Chosen ones.’
The Joy of Bookmarks
I’m not talking about the kind you buy to put in a book to mark your place, I’m mostly talking about incidental bookmarks, the ones you grab to mark your place and often, these can be found in second hand books. You can find many things in second hand books, not just the authors work. I have found receipts posing as bookmarks, usually from the bookshop the book was bought from, sometimes train and bus tickets, shopping lists and even little notes, memos etc.
Then there’s this. It was just a piece of paper within the pages of a second hand book, which I believe was being used as a bookmark. It’s one of my favourites.
I have also found family photos and holiday postcards saying ‘the food is okay, but can’t wait to get back for some fish and chips, it just rained four days straight, but the night life and tequilas are great. Wish you were here!’
I usually leave those things in books. It’s as if those makeshift bookmarks belong there, the same goes for photos, notes and postcards, as long as they’re not incriminating of course, or have I.D info on them. I will remove and destroy pieces of paper and ‘incidental bookmarks’ that have too much info on them, like someone’s address for example.
Some ‘bookmarks’ are meant to stay within the book. You found them in the book so you keep them in the book. Sometimes they belong there. It’s nice just to pass it along to the next owner of the book. It’s a piece of the past that
connects the previous owners and readers of the book to the next and to the moment in time it’s being read. Bookmarks and incidental bookmarks can add to that whole wonder of second hand books.
The Joy of Books (Part Four)
So, as a child reading children’s books, I came across a lot of food and drink stains in the pages and other assorted debris.
I call them U.B.O’s, unidentified book objects
As an adult reading second hand books, things got a bit more savoury within the pages and I’m not talking about the authors viewpoint.
In this final part of The Joy of Books, I’d like to talk about hairgate.
I’ve had a couple of memorable instances regarding dubious looking hairs in books. When it happened the second time, it triggered me because it was almost an exact replica of the first time it happened, about twenty five years ago. The U.B.O’s both had a similar pattern of regularity with similar content.
I was reading a second hand book, of a sci fi genre, an omnibus, consisting of five books. It was a tome of a book and from the get go, quite frequently, between the pages, in the crease, was a long, thick, crinkly, wiry black hair. More hairs of exact colour and texture appeared throughout the book. I tried to ignore them at first and made sure that said hair did not slip out of the book onto my lap.
By the time I got to the third book in the omnibus, I was getting more and more repulsed but the hairs kept coming, and soon, after a bombardment of (what felt like) extreme porportions, I snapped, closed the book and slung it in the bin. Problem solved.
I didn’t want to put someone else through the same experience. I didn’t want to pass the book on as it was, yet, I also didn’t want to go through each page indvidually and somehow extract and dispose of said hairs because I was repulsed just by looking at them. Also, they were distracting. I was reading about iconic characters from a famous sci fi T.V series and all I can see are these hairs.
Had the book been in an orgy? What the hell had it been up to, to get so many hairs in it? My love for star Trek books wasn’t strong enough to endure the U.B.O’s.
I have had one other instance of this with an interlude of about 25 years. So, I think it’s quite an unusual occurence. I have read many second hand books, thus increasing the risk of more foreign objects inside, so the fact that I’ve only had two with a hair infestation is actually not that bad odds.
Illustration by Steve Young
The Joy of Books (Part Three)
The look of books
Aesthetics
Cover, size, look of print,size of print, font type
Light, medium or dark print
Colour and page environment
White page, off white, slightly yellowed, very yellowed
Dirty, mouldy, unidentified stains
Food, liquid, grease, sweat, other.
The cover of books?
I’ll let someone else cover the cover.
Books are meant to be shared
An old, well used paperback or hardback
is good as long as it’s clean
The odd elusive grease stain is acceptable
Can be ignored easily
But then, when we get into food stains
of the third kind
of the oily, damp, highly coloured
sticky kind
the ones that graduate to 3D status
by that, I mean actual food stuffs
Then, my will to ignore
becomes weak.
When I was growing up
the Childrens Library was the absolute worst
for undesirable and unidentifable stains in books.
The stains were mostly food and liquids
the ones I couldn’t stomach
were the green ones
They seemed to appear regularly on the pages
Maybe it was just once
and it traumatized me enough to think
it was just snot all the way
a terrible distraction from whatever I was reading
I had a slight germ phobia
so the children’s book, story and author
had less of an impact than those
slightly alien 3D luminous green things.
The bottom line is, I thought things would get better when I graduated to The Adult Library.
Then I discovered that books for adults were a whole other ball game. Quite literally.
The Joy of Books (Part Two)
The feel of books
Hard back or soft back?
Both please, depending on mood and accessibility.
The hardback is in it for the long haul
Something to hold onto
When all the world is falling apart
When we are falling apart
The hardback can be gripped more fiercely
than any paperback
Without it withering or bending
under the stress of our fingers
to give us the sense that
the world
or ourselves
are not spinning wildly
out
of
control
Hold onto that hardback
For as its name suggests
It is hard
It is a back
And when someone says
they have got your back
It’s good.
Ever read a book with a traumatised spine?
Once a spine goes in a book
it really doesn’t take too long for it to fall apart
a bit like people
Paperbacks bend well
Sometimes circling in on themselves
like a willow in the wind
I love a good bendy paperback
a contortionist of a paperback
Unyeilding paperbacks have their place
but give me a double jointed paperback any day.
Well used paperbacks that have been through the mill
worn and tired and weary
still have the same amount of reading in them
perhaps more so
because of what they’ve been through
You can feel their years on the earth
the emotions that have passed through them
from all those hungry eyes and minds and hearts
fingers clutching or gripping the cover
or gently holding or caressing
Books are inanimate objects
But they were my friends growing up
still are
Like pets, they give unconditional love
they do not judge
and they impart wisdom.
The Joy of Books (Part One)
The smell of books
The scent of print and paper
Some of them like the best cologne in the world
Some spanking new and clinical
Some sharp and gluey
Some sweet and elusive
Some deeply inky
Some second hand,
old, papery, leathery, musty,
earthy, damp, sour
Some impregnated with cigarette smoke
Some experienced worldy books
The ones they call dog eared, well thumbed
The ones that have lived a full, rich life
The wise old ones
that have the stains
the yellowed pages
And the strange odours to prove it
All the hands that have held them
Turned their pages
In daylight, or lamplight, or candle
All the eyes that have gazed upon their pages
Riveted, bored, entertained, comforted
All the rooms they have lived in
All the bookshelves they have marinated in
All the drawers they have got bored in
All the charity shops they have ended up in.
Quote of the Week
‘There where we find the deepest grief, there shall we begin the cure.’
‘The Knight’s Tale’ from The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
Quote of the Week
‘The moon makes dark shadows where the dreams hide. The light is like reason, when the shadows go so too will the dreams.’
The Joy of Subtitles
I used to think the joy of subtitles could only be enjoyed by three types of people
Those who are hard of hearing
Those who have varying degrees of audio processing disorder
And those who like French film noir
I discovered not many other people like them, unless it’s through necessity while watching foreign language movies but also because they distract from the movie they’re watching. I’ve always liked them and have very fond memories of them. Sometimes they stand out in my mind’s eye in favourite films more than the visuals. For me, it adds to the visuals immensely (not just because I’m hard of hearing and have a degree of audio dyslexia) but writing this, I’ve learned that I’m not alone in that thinking.
Lots of people like subtitles nowadays because a lot of actors mumble and you don’t have to be hard of hearing not to catch their words.
The very best thing about subtitles is, if you choose the hard of hearing option specifically on your DVD menu, rather than any other subtitle option, any song playing in the background, no matter if it’s below normal human hearing, will come up in the subtitles. Also whispers come up. So it’s also handy for people who have good, sharp hearing.
Also, any other noises will show up in the subtitles. Scoffing for instance. Scoffing always comes up in Netflix subtitles. He scoffed, she scoffed, they scoffed. I think that’s why I unsubscribed.
So the bottom line is, you tend to have a heads up, if you want a heads up, on everyone else who is watching the movie, in terms of knowledge, details, songs, whispers, scoffing, certainly more info, than if you don’t have subtitles. You never know, it might add more depth to the film. On the other hand, it might give you more knowledge than you desire and you may just want to watch the film without all that palaver.
Quote of the Week
‘Though the ostensible aim of the war was to protect the Turks in the Danube provinces from the invading Russians, the real object, frankly avowed in the Press, was to destroy Sebastopol and end Russian naval power in the Mediterranean.’
The Reason Why – Behind the Scenes at the Charge of The Light Brigade – Cecil Woodham Smith