World Book Day
I’ve always read a lot. I inherited my parent’s taste for books by reading through everything at home, needing no money, taking no risk (except occasionally of getting no sleep). Maybe especially the books about antiquity. Sinuhe, The Last of the Wine*, Turms the Immortal… I am a seasoned time traveller. Actually, I’m reading Mary Renault again these days. I inherited my grandma’s crime novels as a child. She preferred Maria Lang (Swedish), though they are not the reason for my own writing. History is. My cosy crime novels contain real cases from around 1910, illustrations and all.
Reading in my family goes further back than gran. My great grandfather was a sculptor and must have enjoyed watching my great grandmother read. He made the most delicate little statue of her, which now adorns my living room. Plaster only, but beautiful. Reading can be just so elegant. I have her diaries, so I know her a little bit. I also have a few books given to her at birthdays. We share a taste for historical novels.
Where would I go without books?
I can’t imagine a world without books or the written word. Without voices from the past, reaching me one mind to another, or other worlds both real and imagined. A book can capture my attention like nothing else. I step into it and I am gone, forgetting things I wanted to do or watch. I can read what an astrologer wrote in the temple diary as Alexander rode into Babylon, the complaint a merchant wrote to Ea Nasir about copper, Enheduanna’s hymn to the goddess… actually Woolley’s book on his excavations in Ur was one of my first favourites as a child. These days I read court documents at the National Archive, and of course they are not some 4-5000 years old, but they are still a direct link to the past. The papers originally written, coffee spots, ink splatter, corrections, and all. Some already typed. Original papers becoming parts of my books, which my gran would surely have read, had she still been alive today. And possibly commented on. She was a teenager in the 1910s.
The greatest treasure
In my world being able to read or listen, having free access to all books via a local library (in Denmark you can get any book from any Danish library on bibliotek.dk and pick them up locally) is the greatest gift you can ever have. I can learn from Cicero, travel with Ibn Battista, laugh at bishop Percy’s collection of rude songs, cook from The Forme of Cury… stand on the roof of the world, traverse the Australian outback, admire the palace of the Emperor of China, climb the stairs of Tikal, visit Treasure Island, watch the universe end at Miliways, or try my way through L-space, connecting all libraries across time, dimensions and universes. I will never ever be bored.
*) No, my parents had no issues about me aged 10-14 (early 1970’s) reading about men loving men in ancient Greece. That was how it was. What of it? I certainly didn’t think anything of it. (Homosexuality as in ‘against nature’ hasn’t been part of Danish legislation since 1919 and hasn’t been of interest to the police since before 1910. Read ‘is he or isn’t he).