I still remember the first book I read. The novel was ‘Journey to the centre of the Earth’. I was young, very young, and I couldn’t truly understand the innovative power of Jules Verne.
The book was written in an age in which scientific progress had just dawned upon us. People couldn’t yet travel from a corner of the planet to another as easily as it is nowadays. There was power in that writing. A power which soaked me to my bones. That book emanated a mysterious energy. My passion for reading has since continued, taking me to the novels of Isaac Asimov. The Foundation series plunged me into a world characterised by Imperial tradition, historical narrative, and changing forces. It was mesmerising. There was something more than mere adventure. There was an intriguing fight for the power. On one hand, the Imperial establishment struggled to survive a state of increasing degradation. On the other, a bunch of scientists was ready to accomplish any sacrifice possible to create a new and better world. There was one side of the story which increased my sense of astonishment. Asimov had cleverly created a society in which robots could live in and interact with human beings as they had been human beings. Being an adventure wasn’t the real force of this story. Its connection to the reality of our world was. The struggle for power and the search for common well-being are daily real facts. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley came afterwards. The first described how politics might degenerate, creating highly controlled and oppressive societies. He foresaw the coming of a society in which cameras could control any movement of its citizens, and governments were capable of creating fake news and a special language to silence the people voice. His writing instilled the importance of democratic values and the necessity to protect them. Aldous Huxley in “Brave new world” was a step ahead. His dystopic view told of a world in which human beings were created in the laboratory. Any of them had a specific role in the society and belonged to a determined social group without any chance of change. Huxley didn’t only criticise the oligarchic concentration of power, but he warned about the insane use of the science. Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, and Tolkien struck me with their narrative ability and the importance of values, such as friendship, honour and justice – Sherlock Holmes, Poirot and Samwise Gamgee still remain my favourite characters. I believe books have power. They contained an intrinsic sacredness. This is what I feel when I have a book between my hands. It is a sort of invisible force. I can’t help entering a bookshop and perceiving that divine halo that hovers over those mysterious and undiscovered pages. I hang around observing the covers, looking at the titles, and absorbing the energy of those square objects. This sacred energy is what makes a book appealing and venerable. I may pass hours and hours walking around the stalls and bookshelves, trying to embody the writer to understand what he wished to communicate with that work. This sacredness can’t be overwhelmed. It invades you. Ray Bradbury understood the sacred power of books in his masterpiece ‘Fahrenheit 451’. In this story, Bradbury told us of a world in which special fire brigades burnt books because the establishment considered them as dangerous for the society. Books are sacred objects which must be preserved and protected. They deliver the thoughts and knowledge of people who identified positive and negative aspects of the society. The authors want to entertain us, make us laugh or ponder, and, sometimes, they also want to scare us. That’s why I always feel that magic, attractive sacredness whenever I pop into a bookshop.
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November 2020
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