Extrait de l'article "Bookshelf Life" par Julia Hart

Pour les anglophiles, voici l'extrait d'un article paru sur le très chouette site HelloGiggles, et d'où il est question de la passion que l'auteur éprouve pour les bouquins. Je pense qu'à sa place, je n'aurais pas mieux dit, tout y est.

Pour l'article original, cliquez ICI. Pour poursuivre avec un site dans le même tonneau (une compilation de photos de différentes bibliothèques, histoire de baver et de piquer quelques idées d'agencements sympas), je vous propose Bookshelf Porn (et oui.)

=> "There are few things in this world that I love as much as I love books. And when I say that, I’m talking about two things. The first thing is the content. I love stories, characters, sentences, words, commas, periods, photographs, drawings – all of it. And then there’s the actual book, the physical, tangible entity that is BOOK.

I love the way they look. I love the way they feel in my hands. I love that feeling when the weight shifts from the left to the right and you know the end is near and you’re excited and sad at the same time. I love seeing a stranger reading a book. I feel like seeing what they are reading makes them not as much of a stranger anymore. I love the smell of new books. I live for the smell of old books. I love collecting books. I love buying books. I love borrowing and lending books. Don’t even get my started on libraries! I love writing in books – I believe it makes them more loved, not less. I love buying old books and finding other people’s notes in them. I once found a sketch of Teddy Roosevelt dated 1920 in an old copy of A Little Princess. Actual books carry so much more history than their story and the life of their author. They carry the history of everyone who has ever read them and there is something so thrilling about that idea. About all of these people reading that same copy of that same book generation after generation. And now I have goose bumps.

I love bookshelves. As far as I’m concerned, bookshelves are a huge point of pride. To me, they are sort of what I imagine a wall of heads is to a hunter. My bookshelf shows the world my conquests, my game. When I was little I sat in front of my family friend’s bookshelf and I asked him “Which ones have you read?” And he simply replied “All of them.” I was in awe. I wanted to be him when I grew up."

"One of the first things I like to do when I go to someone’s house is check out their bookshelves. I think they say a lot about a person. What books do they have? How do they organize them? What else is on the shelves? Where in their home are the shelves? And the questions go on from there…

And of course, this all leads me to eBooks. Personally, they just don’t do it for me. I need two things in my hands: a real man and a real book. However, I know in my heart eBooks have made more people read more. And that makes me incredibly happy. So, have your eBooks, but here’s my plea: only have them for one of the things we talk about when we talk about books: the CONTENT. Please don’t ever lose the art and the beauty and the history that is an actual BOOK.

So, before you consider those out of date piles of paper as trash, think about how you can honor thousands of years of the publication of words beautiful and strange and the binding of books: make your bookshelf a work of art."