If there’s anything that still exists and stays with you after you die, it’s ideas.

Alberto Manguel’s book cover “A History of Reading”, Hebrew edition, 2001.

“Blurb and stuff” is my first attempt at serious blogging. The only thing that can keep me hooked on blogging is books. The goal is to share my individual interests, thoughts, ideas etc. with other people and learn from them. Because true, massive learning is gained only by brainstorming with other people. Too bad if I won’t have any readers to interact with…

So, how do I interest people and why would they read my blurbs and stuff? Don’t know, but if I think about what I would want to read in a blog then it’s about someone like me, someone’s personal experiences in reading, writing, collecting, thoughts and opinions, everything that has to do with books. I wish myself good luck! My surroundings do not contain many people who are interested in the same things as I am. Israelis read a lot, but they mostly read the new best-sellers, and it’s not interesting to me. We are after all the People of the Book, but somehow I do not know personally in real life any Israeli bibliophile such as myself.

I’m interested in a lot of stuff, but more specific issues are: art and art history, ancient history and cultures, illustration, calligraphy, classic literature, maps, languages and reading books as a an issue on its own. I’ll be presenting books and topics mostly from my own humble collection, which contains till now more than 250 books, stored happily in 2 large bookcases and grows lovingly more and more each month.

So many books, so little time. Unfortunately I can’t spend as much time reading as I would like to, also I’m not a fast reader. My romance with a book I’m reading is slow but extremely satisfying. I have to fully absorb and understand the essence of a sentence, otherwise it’s not worth reading. You can get tons of information, knowledge and ideas from everywhere, but I just love to get it out of a book. A book to me, is an organic tool for containing and preserving live ideas. It’s something about the hard cover, binding, the paper and its scent, the ink and printed letters, the old-fashioned illustrations and ornaments that makes the spiritual action of idea transfer into an outer bodily adventure.

* the image is from Alberto Manguel’s book cover “A History of Reading” (1996), the Hebrew edition (2001). One of my greatest favorites. It depicts  with sensitivity and humor the great Argentinian Author Jorge Luis Borges.

This is not a quick read, or a particularly easy one, but rather one that acts like a religious pilgrimage, cultivating the patience and curiosity that are perhaps waning in an age of instant gratification. It introduces you to a many colourful family members you didn’t know you had.

via A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel | The Keepin’ It Real Book Club.