Books Lost to Time
This article has been approved by my girlfriend.
I’m no poet, nor am I particularly sentimental. In fact I’d say that I’m exactly not sentimental at all, leastways in the course of doldrums. I leave that for my wonderful, emotional, and wonderfully emotional girlfriend. Growing up I actually thought of myself as especially emotional, and while the years have rendered my assessment fairly true, it’s not in the fashion that I thought. Dating a girl really puts into perspective the difference between a man’s emotion and a woman’s.
I was surprised, given the prior paragraph, when I was stricken with a frisson of compassion for books that will be lost forever to time and an overwhelming population and a world wide market saturated to absolute bursting with books, movies, music and video games. If one were to only read books that he was guaranteed to like, he probably would still be unable to consume them all before his death, even were he to live a full, healthy century. Nevertheless, he could at least perhaps read passing reviews on them.
Well, not exactly.
Maybe my sentimentality comes from the particular nature of the book that inspired it: A Figure of Speech by Norma Fox Mazer. What a great name! or pen name, as may be the case. I cannot find a copy of this in hardcover, except for library copies. I found one that might not be a library copy, but there’s no way to ascertain because the person selling it may have failed to include this information, be it true. Not only can I not find a good quality hardcover copy, but I also can find not a single review of this book, and I’m not going to be the one to plumb the depths of a Google web-search more than two pages deep. If it exists, it didn’t appear for dozens of results despite my expertly crafted search terms.
Pictured above: expert craftsmanship.
As you can discern by the cover art, this book is sure to be a heartwarming tale of a granddaughter helping to, as the blurb perfectly phrases it, help her grandpa preserve his dignity. Presumably by preventing him from being sent to an old-folks’ home. No, I haven’t read it.
What? I can be sentimental about something I have only the barest of familiarity with!
And this image represents the extent of my familiarity.
Alright, so the book is old, no one has reviewed it, very few remember it. So what does that mean for me and this article? Essay. Whatever it is. I’m inspired to review it. I’m going to review it and put the review on this very website. The problem, really, is that I have no idea if I should put it under the (a)musings section or the writing and wretching section. I’ve also just realized that I misspelled retching. Boy! what an embarrassing mistake that will go out to all of my readers. Every one of my readers.
All two of them. Hi to my girlfriend and brother.
Of course, this puts me in the awkward position of needing to write negative reviews as well, should a book blow on ice, and I’m aware that this article is philosophically shallow. I’ll give you my philosophy: It’s better to act than to lament. Lamenting is easier and gets more views, admittedly, but it ain’t better. So I shall hoist upon my own shoulders the burden of igniting the flames of memorial, and carving out new epitaphs on the faded faces of these long-dead books’ gravestones.
Look forward to my review in the upcoming months/years/decades.
