On Human Bondage With Books

If I have one teeny tiny minuscule little fetish - it's books.

I love books. I luuuuuuuuuuvvvvvv allllllllllllllllllllll my books.

Truth be told, life would hardly have been liveable without them.

I was asked early on, if I had "ever read any Somerset Maugham?"

At the time, I had not.

So I found me some Maugham. And loved Maugham's compelling storytelling, and glimpses into the mannerisms of days of old. My bond with all things printed and bound was galvanized.

At no point was any of my reading work, or even escapism. It was pure, unadulterated desire and interest to know the natural growth and progression of the evolutionary literary history.

To hold in my hand, and know first hand, the why's and wherefores all these books we've always heard about are Literature, or coined as Classics. I needed to be able to see if I could gauge the authenticity, for my own self, each claim, instead of being told the why by some unknown source.

Why mention my book fetish?

Because I'm not a movie person.

But I just saw - for the first time ever (in 1960's Deluxe colour) Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

A movie set in our bleak future. Where firemen burn books. (not far fetched as not many firemen actually read books)

Total movie crammed into a gist: It was a 1966 Ray Bradbury version of the Matrix, with lower budget special effects. Everyone has become a tv watching stupefied stymied society, who go about their bland and pointless existence, until a couple of cracks appear. The message is: you can't be a reader, you have to be like everybody else [miserable, but ignorant of being so]. With a quiet riptide reliance on pills to help, or prevent, twat-like-people from thinking or feeling.

Now, for someone like myself who loves the aesthetic physicality of books equally as much as their content. This is a horror film. Books are thrown and strewn and burned. Awful seeing the titles of what was being destroyed by the mawing flames.

I happen to have a copy of Dante's Inferno from the 1800's and have other antique books despite having read the Penguin paperback versions first. When I see their poor sad orphaned selves, I feel the irrational imperative to save them - literally keep them safe so as to not be lost or destroyed in my lifetime. Someone before me had this in their library - which time has dismantled - it needs a home.

Books are intangibles made tangible. They are a voice in their own right, and come to life the second you or I pick one up and open it up - despite however long silent and shut, it begins to speak as eloquent as the day it was penned.

Tell me that's not magic.

Getting back to Ray Bradbury's movie - Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature book pages ignite at), the message is: it's wrong to be in possession of a book, let alone be an active reader - you have to do as you're told through the dictatorship medium of television and state controlled "news" or spoon fed information.

In the end....not to give it all away, as it is a nifty psychedelic journey, there are people who commit entire books to memory so as to never lose the art of history and literature, and the selfless souls who originally penned them.

And what selfless, penniless, sentient souls who sit down throughout our entire collective histories, in each and every country, who refused to remain silent, and left so much for millions of people to come centuries later to discover their wit, words, insight and wisdom.

All of whom we are indebted. And because of their act of love we, you and I, are better for it.

I can think of no greater gift to give, or leave people of this world to discover.

Great words, not unlike great paintings, and great symphonies....

....without them, the world's heart, and desire to live, would have perished long ago.