The book: What We Talk About When We Talk About Books by Leah Price
In her book, Price offers an intensive trip/trek/tour through the history of books from Codex to ebooks and everything in between. As I read the book, I nodded my head constantly; yes, I remember those issues relating to the printed world in flux. I was there, I lived it, breathed it and formed my own opinions about the changes. My thoughts then transformed into memory lane about my childhood with books. I too read vociferously from an early age.
As a youngster, my dad and I would walk to the library on Monroe Ave; (Rochester, NY) and later, when allowed to bike I would spend time picking books with the help of the friendly Librarian. Then, with my books in my bike basket, I crossed the street to visit the Monroe Record shop owned by Herman Surasky, violinist, colleague and good family friend in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. My dad played viola. Herman and I would talk Classical music and then he allowed me to take the 33 speed vinyls into the listening booth, don the headphones and listen till it was time to go home. (My books, like so many of us girls in the 50’s. I read all of the girls book series, poetry, girly prose and history and adventure. What a great life I had, knowing I am a lucky one with loving parents, clothing, food, shelter and a rich cultural heritage and still a kid and then teenager with many of the aberrations famous for those ages of defiance testing and practicing to leave the family “nest.” I also, slowly became aware that some of my friends suffered some form of abuse, mental illness and and other aberrations of being human.
I am guilty of performing some of the classic childhood acts of defiance; not always listening to their rules at home or out with friends, reading my books by flashlight under the covers or listening to radio broadcasts; Only the Shadow Knows, or a news broadcast reporting the 1956 Suez Canal incident, or swallows causing disasters with the new jet intakes on the planes. I would often be caught when they peaked in to see if I was asleep, being ordered to go to sleep now. But I believe they chuckled outside my door that I did pursue “culture.” My mom and dad slept in the next room over. (Dad snored LOUDLY) but somehow my mom slept through it and I read to my hearts content.
In my teens, I dared to bring “adult books” home and hid them in my tampon pad boxes also sneaking in time to read them. (My mom had entered menopause years before and never found the books in the box.) One book was entitled The Scapegoat, but a current search does not show the book I read, .
Leah Price’s book is fully packed, dealing of course, with the transition to ebooks and the charges that our health, mental stability and well being was in jeopardy by reading electronically. She deals with the reading of printed books through the ages. She relates the era of self help books in the 70’s through the 90’s especially highlighting the effects and dreaded harm resulting from the printed word. “Men only should be allowed to read,” women should not read. Children could get ill from reading, so such detail.
Price enters realms I never have imagined: Books can be dirty (germ wise) Do not except books from AIDS victims, immigrants, prisoners, the poor, the homeless as they will carry disease.” In 1890, it was a librarian who invented the “book disinfector” to shield middle-class patrons from the germs of dirtier borrowers. This gas chamber for books, a “metal fumigator made from 16th wire gauge sheet iron, with angle iron door-supports and side-shelf rests,” provided a kind of analog virus protection for the trashy novels favored by convalescent girls.”
The scope of this book is immense, too large to try to tackle here. I highly recommend the book but be assured, reading it needs your full attention. (I was conflicted between choosing a remote, quiet space to read because if Paul was nearby I would blurt out quotes from the book that I felt he must hear. It is as I implied, chock full of information and detail. What a big dose of research went into this book.
An aside; I have on order two printed books (100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques and The Child That Books Built by Frances Spufford) because they are not available in Kindle format or at the library in the volume I wish to read but are high on my list of books to read. So I do remain flexible to a point. I cherish my printed books that live in our apartment but see them only a few months a year and spend time in my book-zoo, sitting on the floor by the bookshelves, loving , scanning and petting my precious printed books. On our motorhome, weight limits point to the ebook format exclusively but I am content and only happiest when I am reading a good book, always submitting reviews on Amazon with a rack of books in my virtual library.