tavie.com

OK. Yes. Now I remember what I wanted to say.

J. P. Morgan had one of the largest private collections of antique books in the world. Books from the dawn of books. Books handwritten by monks or printed on Gutenberg's first machines. Really, really old and rare. In his private library, the one off his private study, there are shelves and shelves of these books locked behind sheets of glass, which are encased in ornate iron bars like little book prisons. The room is very large for a private library, because he was, you know, J. P. Morgan. It was reminiscent of Belle's first glimpse of the Beast's library, if you remember that scene, stacks and rows looming overhead for three stories. The books were all leather-bound, gilt, richly decorated. Some of the most beautiful, expensive, old book-bindings you ever saw in your life.

It was so, so depressing. Not one ugly, well-read, well-loved book. All they were were ghosts of books that no one is allowed to touch, that no one will ever read, that maybe no one has ever read. I bet even John Pierpont Morgan himself didn't have time to thumb through most of them, busy as he was being the richest man in the world.

Maybe they were boring books (a lot of them were bibles, so there you go.) But there's an audience for every book in the world, and so chances are there are millions of souls that could have been entertained, enchanted, or enlightened by any one of these books. But they weren't allowed to do anything but be locked up as treasures.

Poor, sad, lonely, unread, unloved books bought only for their covers. They must know how supermodels feel, those books.

Gina calls it heresy, and I always treat books that I'm borrowing from others with care, but as for my own, personal libarary, it is largely comprised of ugly, dog-eared, coffee-stained, margin-scribbled, yellowing, crumbling, broken-spiked affairs with sketches and poems crowded onto inside covers, front and back. There's nothing I love more than a well-loved book. Except maybe Wo Hop's roast duck Chow Fun.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:02 AM | shower me with attention