Art Heals: Reading Matter

An interesting aspect of getting older is that in some respects my eyesight is getting better.  I find I must take off my glasses now, to read.  Of course, this results in endless frantic searches for said glasses whenever the phone rings or the water kettle whistles.  Reading is the only thing I can do without my glasses on.  No, I take that back.  I can also bathe. Much cleaner now.

Anyway, the glasses thing is not a problem, as I spend a lot of my time reading.  I always have, even as a child.  I used to walk to a bookstore near where we lived when I was in grammar school, an old fashioned  dark-walled store redolent of paper and ink and real cloth bindings, where I spent my allowance and  birthday money amassing a huge collection of Modern Library classics. (The Modern Library series of well-made, affordable reprints of the classics started in 1917, published by Boni and Liveright, later taken over by Random House.  The ones I bought had a pebbly buckram finish and featured at least 376 titles.  Other editions varied a bit, but ultimately over 1,000 separate books were published.)

These books, while affordable to a 12-year-old girl, (they cost under $2.00, and my allowance was 25 cents) were also substantial and beautiful, each hardbound cover a different color but sharing identical typeface and colophon. How magnificent they looked, arrayed on my bookshelf, organized by color as soon as I had a sufficient quantity. I read them all, creating sets as soon as I found a writer I liked—Trollope, Jane Austen, Dostoevsky (really) and my favorite, Shakespeare. (This came in useful in high school, as I had to pass a mandatory swimming test and only got through it by repeating dialog from Much Ado About Nothing as I swam the required number of laps.  Beatrice and Benedict were my ideal romantic couple at age 14.  Go figure. As Louisa May Alcott said, “She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain.”) 

These volumes graced shelves in my various homes for more than 50 years. When I moved to my 3-room apartment, I donated them to the scouts.  Lack of space has forced me to rely on a Kindle now. With it I can hold several thousand books in the palm of my hand, and when I wake in the middle of the night, go to the “store” and instantly buy any book I desire.  Of course I miss the smell and look and feel of “real” books, but time, and life, moves on, and I am particularly grateful to be able to read old favorites and discover new ones during this pandemic, when I rarely leave my apartment.

I have never had so much time to read since the long summer vacation days when I was 12.  Reading takes me out of my head and into someone else’s. That is another way art heals.