BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:THE JOYS OF READING

"There are certain spiritual experieces in our lives 
which we would not have missed for anything, They are 
worth more to us than years of ordinary existence. 
In an hour the soul rises to a higher plane, and, 
despite temporary lapses, one can never live again 
on the lower level. The mind leaps to an elevation. That afternoon in my room on the top floor of old North 
Middle, as I absorbed The Hero as a Man of Letters, 
I was in an ectasy. There is no other word for it. 
The pages of the book seemed to be aflame, and the 
fire consumed me utterly."

William Lyon Phelps. As I like It (New York: 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924
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IN PRAISE OF THE BOOK AS AN OBJECT

"It's obvious to most of us that the book as a form has a great virtue. The paper, the ink, the cover, what Updike called 'the charming little clothing box of the thing' -- we understand without  having it pointed out how much they add to the experience of reading. No congregation will ever celebrate the Torah in paperback,"
 
D.T. May. "The Electronic Book" in The American Scholar
(Summer 2000)
**
From LIFE LINES: A COMMONPLACE BOOK

Charlie Cherry has published LIFE LINES, the best one-volume collection of quotations for all kinds of readers.
In his introduction, Dr. Cherry referred to Henry Davd Thoreau who had this to say about the joys of reading:

No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.  It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips---not to be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech. . . . Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. . . . There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning of the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us.
 —Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden (1854), pp. 118-119 & p. 123.
 
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MAX CARRADOS, THE BLIND DETECTIVE

“When  (ERNEST) Bramah introduced the blind Carrados, he created the first physically handicapped detective in mystery fiction. Having become blind as an adult, Carrados is able to adjust and maintain his life, including his abilities to detect. His blindness does not weaken his zest for life. He works side by side with his friend Louis Carlyle, a private investigator who is a disbarred lawyer. The key to the books  is the way a sighted man is blind to the clues that Carrados can detect.”

Gary Warren Niebuhr. Make Mine A Mystery:
A Reader’s Guide to Mystery and Detection Fiction
(Libraries Unlimited, 2003).

**

ON EMMA BOVARY

“ She was enmeshed in a particular set of historical circumstances – a flourishing letter-writing culture, burgeoning female literacy, an emerging awareness of urban bourgeous fashion among the professional classes –
Which created an especially wide gulf between women’s expectations of love and its realities. ‘To be in fantasy is to live ‘as if’, according to Denise Riley, but life may become intolerable when a metaphor collides with the facts.”

Erin Maglaque. “Promises, Promises” in London Review 
of Books (23 April 2022)
**
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET

"Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary 
Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's 
most successful and well-known novel. Critic John 
Sutherland (1989) described the work as "the most 
sensationally successful of all the sensation novels".

By some estimates,  Lord Audley's Secret was the 
best selling novel of the 19th Century
**

READING POETRY IS NOT ALWAYS
THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD
TO DO

If you are reading this poem
While running away
From 3 or 4 Russian spies
Who have silencers
On their guns
& umbrellas with poisoned tips,
You are, most likely,
Not giving this poem
The full attention it deserves.

Louis Phillips