I’m doing surprisingly well in quarantine, but one thing I’m really missing—that there isn’t a good substitute for—is the library. I can still see friends and family through zoom, and I like cooking enough that I’m not really missing restaurants just yet, but there’s a hole in my life where the library used to be.
I can’t read a book on my phone or computer. I just can’t do it. So even though my library lets me check out ebooks for free with Libby, it’s not helping. I’m trying not to buy more books at this point either. I’d end up spending all my money and would quickly run out of storage space since my book shelves are already stacked.
So I’m stuck with actually reading the books I own. Which happens to be quite a lot. The problem is, I bought most of those books YEARS ago and let them gather dust until I eventually lost interest. A LOT of them are written by long-dead white guys, which doesn’t exactly spark my interest like it used to.
One thing I do like about those old dead white guys is the way they use language. Here are some choice quotes from what I read in April.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
from Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.
from The Stranger by Albert Camus
Everybody needs his memories, they keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
from Mr. Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow
sooo many things 