Book Around the Corner

I’m back home from a three weeks holiday break and as usual, I’ve collected random bookish pictures and facts.

Park and Read, this parking meter seems to say…

Books left for grabs, by the beach

Beautiful library in Casa Museu Freitas. (Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, I’m not a professional photographer and I don’t get to visit places when the light is at its best for photos.)

A corner to read by the fire, a corner to play games and shelves of books…I’d prefer a décor in lighter tones since I’m not fond of the red-dark-wood-man-cave vibe but I’d love to have such a spacious read-and-chill room.  

Of course, I tend to visit bookstores. Here’s one that looks more like a book cave than anything else:

Books are piled everywhere. They are filed in a computer system but only the owner seems to be able to locate a specific book. The reader walks slowly in the aisles, tries not to bump into anything in fear of starting an uncontrollable domino effect. This place is fascinating.

While wandering in another bookshop, I stumbled upon a school edition of No et moi by Delphine de Vigan. This novella is on the school syllabus for middle school and look at the format of the book: it screams ‘I’m homework!’ and not ‘Please read me, it’ll be fun’.

It’s a disaster. The cover mentions a dossier and exercises. The actual story only begins after 22 pages of explanations that are, in my opinion, part of the teacher’s job as a middleman between the text and the students. And then, on each page, you have numbers to locate specific sentences in class and dissect them. Where’s the pleasure of reading in that?

Let’s face it, there’s little chance that a middle school student will have fun reading Le Cid by Corneille. The odds of instilling undying love for books with Le Cid are close to zero. These odds improve with books like No et moi, stories that teenagers who don’t read might enjoy. And this edition, it’s like going to a blind date with Literature and she has not removed her green face mask, her curlers and she’s wearing her tattered bathrobe. It kills the mood. It’s like watching a movie with the description of all the special effects in the subtitles. It’s distracting, you’re so blinded by the mechanics that you forget to enjoy yourself.

I think that we have our priorities in the wrong order. In times where books are in competition with videogames, TV shows and social networks, the first aim in school should be to give the kids the reading bug. The rest will come with it. The reading bug is a lifelong thing, a great companion for life.

Another bookstore in Lisbon.

Don’t ask me why it’s written in French on the walls. Inside, the space is gorgeous with its old wooden shelves.

Another bookstore, and I found funny tote bags for my friends. Here are two of them:

I walked a street covered with portraits and pictures made with recycled cans. Here’s Fernando Pessoa

Google translate says that the caption means “it’s all worth it when the soul is not small”. And I have to end this post with a Mafalda picture, from the same street.

The caption seems to say “This is the rubber to erase ideologies”. Very Mafalda, if I may say. If a Portuguese native speaker sees this, please feel free to elaborate about the captions and correct the automatic translation.

An article of the FT Weekend caught my attention in a hotel. It said Kerouac, but cleaner? A journalist decided to check out what road trips could be with an electric car and did one between San Francisco and Reno, Nevada. Let’s say it’s not as romantic as On the Road. It reminded me of On the Holloway Road by Andrew Blackman, his debut novel in which he shows that road trips à la Kerouac on British highways are what American coffee is to espressos.

I had a lot of books with me on the first leg of my holidays…

some I brought with me to read, some because I needed to catch up on billets, some aren’t my TBR, and some I bought during my stay. On the second leg, I intended to read American Pastoral but I didn’t have enough quality reading time for that. Partie remise! 🙂

That’s all, Folks! I hope you’re having a great summer.