The books are amorous like the old man

A new library has recently opened next to the house, which is gratifying. In the library, there are not enough books, but they have been sorted and arranged, and the shelves and grids that go straight to the ceiling remind me of what Borges said, "Heaven should be like a library."

The bookstore is bright and open, there are reading rooms, and freshly ground coffee for sale, I have a library card and borrow back a copy of Tagore's essay collection "Those Happy Times".

"Those happy times", yes, it seems that many happy times are related to reading. Reading a good article and a good poem is a sense of happiness, and this happiness includes the inner peace of mind when the fingers rub the pages.

There is no doubt that books have gradually faded out of our lives and been replaced by various electronic screens - mobile phones, tablets, e-book readers, which are also providing people with "reading" content. However, these mediums imply the impetuousness and haste of modern society. When you open your mobile phone to read, you may not have watched a few sections to remember the update of the circle of friends, in that "circle", countless new things are covered and obliterated by more fresh things, such as "thin evening roaring tourists, cars and horses driving dust". In the billowing smoke on the Internet, those who can't wait to say and publish interfere with the reading mentality.

Unlike electronic screens, the pages naturally contain a calm and soothing. When you face the page, it is like facing the author, facing every protagonist who lives in the book, they talk to you, you share their joys, and you share their grievances.

The charm of the book lies in the text and ideas it carries, and also in the physical object itself. Text, ideas, binding, and paper make up the whole of a book. In those different fonts, line spacing and illustrations, books have their own independent lives.

Your memories of a good book are not only the content, but also the cover, the feel of the pages, and the weather outside the window when you read it, your state of mind, and even the cup of tea you have at hand.

The poet Chen Dongdong said: "Every book is all time, all roads. They line up, superimpose, wind, traffic, and surround you in the study with the wall of books..." Yes, walk into the shelves of the library, like a labyrinth of time. If, replace the sentence with "Every electronic screen is all the time, all the way." They line up, superimpose, wind, traffic, and surround you in that study with the screen as the wall... "It's a little awkward isn't it?"

Books are a special medium, and the turning of pages is the dream and thinking of readers for thousands of years.

Paper books themselves are also an art, beautiful binding and craftsmanship to bring readers to the eye, some out-of-print books also have the value of collection and research. A friend of mine has bought six or seven sets of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and every time he encounters a version he likes more, he always can't help but buy it. Often, when friends gather together, the gifts he brings are books, for adults, for children.

Once I went to a friend's small building in the suburbs. He works in the city and comes here in his spare time to read books, grow vegetables and drink tea. He doesn't know much about the Internet, and he seems to have no less knowledge than everyone else, and maybe even a little more, such as agricultural knowledge, as evidenced by a dustpan he brought out to grow peanuts.

Terrace, the night in the mountains is almost dark blue. In my friend's little study was a desk, a gray sofa by the window, and a few shelves of books. When he opens the book, he will definitely turn off his phone. It was a complete time of his own, uncut and possessed. The moonlight outside the window shone on the book in his hand, and the picture was exactly the portrayal of "the books are amorous like the old people, and the morning and dusk are sad and happy every blind date".

In Deblin's novel The Library, chimney sweeper Karl Friedel is convinced that "books in the library will have a huge impact on the walls and ceilings around them over time, so that people can gain some knowledge if they stay here for a while, sit on any chair or stand everywhere." The celibate man with a serious expression often sat in the library in his spare time, motionless, with a deep reverence for books. This is an unforgettable man, he represents people's admiration and respect for culture, not slippery and scrawled.

Turning the page is in itself a ritual that shuts out the uproar, slows down life, the heart, enters a book, enters the inner world of an author.

I miss reading in bookstores. I have seen such a sentence: "The book readers are even more inconspicuous than the passers-by in the movie lens, but their sculptural reading will make you want to buy a book they are reading." "Mr. Dong Qiao once said that the more exquisite the seal is designed, the more you see the deep affection of the bibliophile for the book. That mark also reveals the identity and mind of the book collector - when the books are electronic, where can this mark with the taste and temperament of the owner of the book be found?

I don't deny the convenience of e-books. On the subway and on the plane, they spent a lot of time with me. More often, however, electronic products, including mobile phones, have greatly affected my concentration on reading—ten lines at a glance. And, when I finish a book with electronics, I usually don't read it a second time, because it's not as convenient as the page turns—when I want to look back at a wonderful description, I can always turn the book back to the shallow folded page number, instead of clicking "back" on the screen or pulling the progress bar. Sometimes, if you can't find that page, the upper right corner of the electronic screen may show 1% of the battery balance.

The bright moon in the sky, its silhouette is often sunburned in the circle of friends, but the moonlight can not be shared and live, it sprinkles on everyone's body, evoking different memories.

Paper books are like the quiet moonlight.

(Author: Chen Weiwen)

(Guangming Daily)