“Outdoors
of a canine, a ebook is man’s finest buddy. Inside a canine it’s
too darkish to learn.”

— Both Groucho Marx or Jim Brewer

###

Books are an intrinsic
a part of my life: I learn them, I write them, I commerce them, I steward
them (within the Little Free Library in Previous City Espresso &
Sweets), I borrow them (from the library), I seek advice from them (in
the Humboldt Room of the library), I edit them, I get them printed
and printed, I’m by no means with out one. Or 10.

Books, in some type,
have been round for at the very least 4 thousand years. For example, we
have an alabaster disc naming Enheduanna because the creator of poems
written, in cuneiform, on the disc. She was priestess of the moon god
Nanna and daughter of Sargon the Nice (2340-2285 B.C., founding father of
the Akkadian Empire. Enheduanna wrote greater than poetry: her
Ninmeshara, copied on at the very least 100 clay tablets, is a prolonged
account of a revolt towards her nephew, as an example.

For the world’s first
lengthy ebook, that’s, epic, the earliest of those that’s
survived the millennia is that of Gilgamesh, which chronicles the
implausible adventures of the king of Uruk and his pal Endiku,
together with the Flood Story, plagiarized by the writers of Genesis over
a thousand years later. The oldest surviving clay tablets of the Epic
of Gilgamesh date to round 1800 B.C., though essentially the most full
variations are more moderen copies from Ninevah. Quickly to observe have been
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

All of those have been
hand-copied till a couple of thousand years in the past, with the primary makes an attempt
at mechanical copying in China and India. Then got here the breakthrough
yr, 1455, with Johannes Gutenberg’s (1398-1468)
mechanically-printed 1,200-page Bible. As soon as the dam was
damaged, the flood poured out. Inside 50 years of Gutenberg’s Bible,
over 250 printers have been furiously at work all throughout Europe utilizing his
expertise. Historians estimate that 15 million books have been printed
mechanically between 1455 and 1500, greater than the sum complete of all
books copied manually earlier than then.

As we speak, the enterprise of
books — actual, paper, dead-tree books — is booming. Annually, nearly
a billion bodily books are bought, bringing in revenues of almost $10
billion. And no surprise! The magic of all of it! To hold round, maybe
as a paperback in a single’s pocket, the story of a life, drama,
battle, directions on how to achieve life & love, the
historical past of a city or the world or the universe, the knowledge of these
who lived way back, a Bible or Ebook of Miracles or the Tao, the
imaginations of futurists and fantasists … and all without spending a dime, from a
library; or for peanuts, from a secondhand retailer; or for the value of
an honest meal out in order for you the newest hardbound best-seller.

Someplace in each
ebook there’s a gem to be uncovered, usually a tiara’s value of
treasured stones. Right here’s what I discovered within the final one I learn,
Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of this Ebook, a tribute to
her late mom, buried in an in any other case unassuming paragraph: “Her
reminiscence for unhappiness and distress was horrible.” To have that
inscribed on one’s headstone! Or this speaks to me, a wannabe
“good author”: “I don’t suppose writing is that arduous, as lengthy
as you’re comfy with failure on each single degree.” (See
Hemingway: “It’s straightforward to put in writing. Simply sit in entrance of your
typewriter and bleed.”)

A number of years in the past, I
found graphic novels — what I’d beforehand spurned as
“comics” — beginning out with arguably one of the best of one of the best, Neil
Gaiman’s Sandman collection. What enjoyable! Nice storytelling
in phrases and photos! Now I by no means journey with out at the very least one new
graphic novel to savor after darkish, earlier than sleep, to kickstart my
goals.

So many books, so
little time, so my two bits of recommendation to readers. One: learn
every little thing and something, put nothing off limits. Two: Don’t
preserve studying a ebook if you happen to’re not having fun with it. Life’s quick. Transfer
on to the subsequent one.