At the moment, I am finishing a political novel-essay with difficulty… But I respect my personal commitment to finish a work before reviewing it… the number of books that I have abandoned definitively is very rare indeed.
Because reading – and television, I admit – is a major component of my daily life as an old lady diminished by illness.
Above all, I admit my strong anxiety: running out of a book to read, as soon as I begin the last hundred pages of the work I am finishing.
Thank goodness I live in Paris less than 200 meters from two large general bookstores. And then I still have reserves, like the complete works of Zola which I have not yet exhausted…
Because reading, especially in the evening, just before going to sleep, is a vital necessity. If I don’t have anything to read, I don’t fall asleep until around 3 a.m. My day the next day is largely burdened by it.
Unfortunately, I note two totally contradictory trends among publishers: books of more than a thousand pages packaged in a single volume, impossible to read comfortably in bed, and conversely, texts that the publisher has worked to “inflate » to reach at least 200 pages: multiplication of chapters ending with pages comprising just a few lines and separated from the next chapter by a blank page…
I thought that we should strive to save paper, reduce the volume to be transported… Which naturally leads to an increase in the price of the book, now well above 20 euros for a “large format” and 10 euros for a pocket book.
Sorry, I haven’t been able to get used to digital reading: I like the enjoyable sensation of opening a new work, the smell of the ink, the rustling of the pages… I appreciate the texture of the paper and its color, the elegance of the typography and its readability, the harmonious layout.
In Paris, I classified my three libraries by genre: literature, history, thrillers…But I have a hard time getting rid of books that I have already read but which have disappointed me. My libraries are therefore full of books.
But fortunately for me, my children and sometimes grandchildren “borrow” some from me!
Which results in the fact that I often no longer have my favorite books on the shelves: they have their own life!
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