How to read

 

Portrait of a Woman by the British artist Nina Hamnett, painted in 1917.

Thanks to my friend (and once colleague at Friends House Library) for pointing out this painting, which fits the theme of this blog so well.  My starting point this time is the various forms of reading material.  Our living room and landing are lined with bookshelves, and many, many books, most gathering dust.  But these days a lot of my reading is on an electronic device - not often a computer with keyboard, but some form of tablet.  My daily newspapers and other periodicals come on my iPad, downloading quickly each morning as I settle with my breakfast.  Most of the books I read are stored on my Kindle - light and easy to use.

a mechanical multi-reader

Traditional books, hardback and paperback, have a firm place in our lives and affections.  They are also vital not just when the power goes off (that includes forgetting to charge batteries), although without some form of light they are hard to read in the dark!  They are often however essential to look at illustrations and maps properly, so often I have a book to hand beside the same text I'm reading on the Kindle.  But I do like the searchable quality of the electronic version, and two features in particular - first, reading in French as I quite often do, I can get an instantaneous translation of a word I don't know; and second, I can remind myself quickly of the identity of a character in a book, when they first appeared and so on.  The parallel process of hunting through a paper book can be very time-consuming.  And the Kindle has a built-in light, so I can read in bed without disturbing my companion.   But I was delighted to discover this picture of multi-book reader recently - fine craftsmanship and practical when you have several books on the go!  Even so, the Kindle takes up less room.  However, for illustrations and maps the little Kindle is not much use - for these, a paper copy or a computer screen are much easier.

Last time I wrote about Emma Smith's Portable magic, all about books.  My other recent discovery, which I think is essential reading for librarians, is Judith Flanders' A place for everything: the curious history of alphabetical order.  She points out, in fascinating detail, how many options there are for arranging things, from early first-letter-only alphabetical onwards.  My experience is that the alphabet defeats most people arranging books on chelves, but we need to keep trying - a mis-shelved book in a library is effectively lost!

Libraries come in many shapes and sizes, few though as impressive as this Brazilian one, the Royal Portuguese Reading Room in Rio de Janeiro, opened to the public in 1883

To finish this time I'll return to Alan Bennett whose writing, radio and television have delighted us for many years.  Two small books of his have recently bobbed to the surface of our reading piles - the (as far as I know!) 100% fictional The uncommon reader, the story of the Queen's temporary obsession with reading thanks to a mobile library parked in a Buckingham Palace yard and a young literate kitchen assistant called Norman; and the other the certainly not fictional The lady in the van about his befriending of Mary Shepherd, an eccentric vagrant woman who lived in her vehicle(s) in front of his house in north London for many years until her death.  This latter was memorably filmed with Maggie Smith.