Later today, I was perusing the books we had in our bookshelves, trying to come up with an organizational system that was adequate for our books at the time but flexible enough for additional books we were sure to pick up in the future. I stumbled upon a copy of On Writing Well, which I had no idea we had sitting in our shelves, and squarely on the book cover was a sticker that read:
Tae R. Lee
15003 N.E. 84th St., #172
Redmond, WA 98052
15003 N.E. 84th St., #172
Redmond, WA 98052
I was a bit shocked. I didn't remember picking this book up back home, aware that it was my father's. Most likely I was looking through our bookshelves in Washington and found the title interesting, taking it back to my room and inadvertently bringing it with me to college in Washington. I have yet to read it, but now I have renewed vigor in reading it, and an additional fondness towards my father.
I have been told, many a time, by friends and co-workers how ridiculous it is to buy a book nowadays. They certainly seem overpriced when browsing the aisles of Barnes & Noble and other high end bookstores. And with the development of free information, via Wikipedia and Google, why would you bother to buy something you can get for free? A book can easily cost $20 or more, and few people find ways to rationalize paying that much money for something they might not read anyway.
But for me, there is something more than just mere entertainment or education in a book. It is a friend you can turn to again and again, to re-tell their stories, or to familiarize yourself with their subject material. Upon my shelves, I can hold a conversation with Thomas More about society, Rachel Carson about the environment in the 1960s, or politics with Plato. I can have stories told to me over and over again, some I never grow tired of. Patricia Wrede with her fractured fairy tales, Madeline L'Engle and her surreal fantasy, Joseph Heller and his hilarious satire, J.R.R. Tolkien and his sweeping epics all sit upon my shelves, waiting patiently for me to dust their covers off and visit once again.
To read a book is an intense and completely immersing experience. You do not merely read words with your eyes; reading a book means running my hands over the cover, sometimes glossy and new, sometimes old and wrinkled, like the face of a wise, old sage with wisdom beyond my years. It means smelling the subtle, slightly woody scent of freshly processed pulp pressed into sheets with ink, or perhaps that fiercely familiar musty odor of pages yellowed with time, listening to the slight shuffling of paper, the crackling of older books as I coax them open to reveal what they have to teach me.
And every now and then, your child will stumble upon that book years from when you purchased it. Perhaps you read it; perhaps you didn't. I don't know if my father ended up reading William Zinsser's On Writing Well. But for that moment, as I stopped to investigate that innocently innocuous sticker on the front cover, I felt incredibly connected to my father. We had both, at one time, reached for the same book, and wanted to read it. The years roll backward, and for one single instance, two very different people - my father and I - are very much alike, and it's an incredibly strange, but powerful emotion. Despite whatever disagreements we might have had, or the clashes in the past, there is one familiar strand that ties us together - that we both, at one time, reached for the same book. A simple idea, and yet for a son separated physically from most of his immediate family and standing at the cusp of fatherhood, how many short years that may be, it holds thunderous and comforting implications - that at one time, we both became interested in the same subject and that in this brief moment, I am following faithfully in the footsteps of a father I admire. And it was almost as if my father, twenty years in the past, purchased it for me, and put it away, because he knew someday, I would want to read it.
Fanciful thinking, wishful hoping and romanticized writing, many would say. And certainly, my father most likely had no idea that this simple purchase would affect me so much one sweaty summer afternoon in a small studio apartment in Provo, Utah, more than 1,000 miles away. Was it well worth the $12.35 my father paid for at the time as he purchased it from the Bellevue Community College those many years ago? I have no idea what he thought then, but some approximate two decades later, I'm glad he bought and shelved it for an unsuspecting son to take it and intend on reading it, then forgetting about it, only to find it after looking for it again.
If all it takes is twenty odd dollars to build future bridges with my future son through the passing down of books, for me, it is well worth the price.
I have been told, many a time, by friends and co-workers how ridiculous it is to buy a book nowadays. They certainly seem overpriced when browsing the aisles of Barnes & Noble and other high end bookstores. And with the development of free information, via Wikipedia and Google, why would you bother to buy something you can get for free? A book can easily cost $20 or more, and few people find ways to rationalize paying that much money for something they might not read anyway.
But for me, there is something more than just mere entertainment or education in a book. It is a friend you can turn to again and again, to re-tell their stories, or to familiarize yourself with their subject material. Upon my shelves, I can hold a conversation with Thomas More about society, Rachel Carson about the environment in the 1960s, or politics with Plato. I can have stories told to me over and over again, some I never grow tired of. Patricia Wrede with her fractured fairy tales, Madeline L'Engle and her surreal fantasy, Joseph Heller and his hilarious satire, J.R.R. Tolkien and his sweeping epics all sit upon my shelves, waiting patiently for me to dust their covers off and visit once again.
To read a book is an intense and completely immersing experience. You do not merely read words with your eyes; reading a book means running my hands over the cover, sometimes glossy and new, sometimes old and wrinkled, like the face of a wise, old sage with wisdom beyond my years. It means smelling the subtle, slightly woody scent of freshly processed pulp pressed into sheets with ink, or perhaps that fiercely familiar musty odor of pages yellowed with time, listening to the slight shuffling of paper, the crackling of older books as I coax them open to reveal what they have to teach me.
And every now and then, your child will stumble upon that book years from when you purchased it. Perhaps you read it; perhaps you didn't. I don't know if my father ended up reading William Zinsser's On Writing Well. But for that moment, as I stopped to investigate that innocently innocuous sticker on the front cover, I felt incredibly connected to my father. We had both, at one time, reached for the same book, and wanted to read it. The years roll backward, and for one single instance, two very different people - my father and I - are very much alike, and it's an incredibly strange, but powerful emotion. Despite whatever disagreements we might have had, or the clashes in the past, there is one familiar strand that ties us together - that we both, at one time, reached for the same book. A simple idea, and yet for a son separated physically from most of his immediate family and standing at the cusp of fatherhood, how many short years that may be, it holds thunderous and comforting implications - that at one time, we both became interested in the same subject and that in this brief moment, I am following faithfully in the footsteps of a father I admire. And it was almost as if my father, twenty years in the past, purchased it for me, and put it away, because he knew someday, I would want to read it.
Fanciful thinking, wishful hoping and romanticized writing, many would say. And certainly, my father most likely had no idea that this simple purchase would affect me so much one sweaty summer afternoon in a small studio apartment in Provo, Utah, more than 1,000 miles away. Was it well worth the $12.35 my father paid for at the time as he purchased it from the Bellevue Community College those many years ago? I have no idea what he thought then, but some approximate two decades later, I'm glad he bought and shelved it for an unsuspecting son to take it and intend on reading it, then forgetting about it, only to find it after looking for it again.
If all it takes is twenty odd dollars to build future bridges with my future son through the passing down of books, for me, it is well worth the price.
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1 comment:
You're not going to believe it, but that address was in my last area on my mission. uncanny!
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