Read

 

Vieille femme en train de lire, Rembrandt

 

 

Text by Maya Kodeih Harmanani, 2014

 

I held those neatly cut and piled stacks of paper, I inhaled their scent. I pressed my fingers against the glossy covers with their bright colors and images. I let my eyes wander through the shelves that encircled me. I was drunken by the quiet and the sacredness of the place. An overwhelming sensation of nostalgia invaded me. It had been months since I last visited a book store.

Holding the books reminded me of what I had lost after I became a heavy tablet user. E-books had replaced print books. Electronic shelves were being filled to free space on the shelves of my library. On days when I wanted to do nothing, I would sit in my living room, look at my library from far and spot some of the books I had finished reading. I would go grab one of them, leaf through it, read some passages, spot some notes I had scribbled in the margins and be transported to past moments, past sensations and past thoughts. I would travel back in time.

There's an unexplainable charm that exists in bookstores and in books, hidden between those pages and those shelves, and I would never like to loose it, not for any technology in the world.

 

Après le bal, Ramon Casas y Carbo

 

 

For more paintings of readers :

https://lullastories.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/livre-dimag...