"Reading books changes lives. So does writing them."- Sarah Ban Breathnach.
Monday, September 27, 2010
"Books are as essential as breathing. In my experience, when going down for the third time, it was often word-to-word resuscitation that saved the day."- Sarah Ban Breathnach in her August 21st entry in Simple Abundance.
"We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become."- Ursula K. LeGuin
"We remain the same except for the places we go, the people we meet, and the books we read."- Peter Legge
Books Breathe
There are times when I may not remember all the details of the books that I've read, but I seem to always be able to recall the way each book made me feel.
It's magical to me, the way books seem to have a life of their own. They carry a whole other world in and amongst their flimsy pages- a simple binding holding them together, but something so powerful than that in their lines, the way they touch their readers, and the way they inform and create in our own minds, through mere letters.
Books have saved me through times of loneliness, confusion and uncertainty. They have inspired me to widen my imagination, travel to places I would not have even dreamed of, and have compassion for people and places I might not have otherwise.
Some books breathe life into their readers, and have an all knowing air about them, an awareness as to who needs which one of them. Even while they sit reticent on library or shop shelves, books seem to observe the people that pass by them. Somehow, they arrange themselves in ways that make us stop in our tracks- either because of their atttactive covers or intriguing titles.
Despite their apparent silence while they are closed, once opened, books can often scream out loudly at us to change a part of our lives, to think deeper, providing us with greater understandings of ourselves and the world around us.
And sometimes, the effect they have on us doesn't become apparent until many years later, when the words of the author have sunk in deeply, intermingling with our experience, growth, and understanding, until we are finally able to feel their true impact on us as human beings.
This blog is dedicated to the way books and their writers change us, and thus, change our world.
Famous quotes about books...
"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."- Charles W. Eliot"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." -Franz Kafka"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." "Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."- W. Fusselman "These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." -Gilbert Highet "I am a part of everything I have read."- John Kieran "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." - Harper Lee "Life happened because I turned the pages."- Alberto Manguel (A History of Reading- 1996). "To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."- W. Somerset Maugham. "I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive." - Malcolm X
I Recommend
Forty Rules of Love
The Rosie Project
Something More- by Sarah Ban Breathnach
No One Belongs Here More Than You - collection of short stories by Miranda July
Stargirl (thanks Tony Grant)
The God of Small Things (thanks Ellen!)
Eat, Pray, Love
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
The Girls Who Went Away
Who Moved My Cheese (thanks, Keita!)
The Alchemist
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Kite Runner
The Buddha
Some Great Used/ Discounted Bookstores in Vancouver
Chroma Books- 4458 Main Street- 604-675-9889 604-675-9889
Characters Fine Books and Coffee Bar- 8419 Granville Street-604-263-4660
The Bookstall in Ambleside- #115- 1425 Marine Drive, West Vancouver- 604-926-2425 604-926-2425
The Book Emporium- 1234 Granvill Street- 604-682-3019 604-682-3019
