Look up the word "alphabet" on wikipedia.com and it tells you, "The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. It originated around the 7th century from Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current Modern English alphabet of 26 letters with no diacritics, digraphs, nor special characters. The word alphabet is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta."
Perhaps they ought to have an entry under "The wonders of the alphabet" which would then read something like this: "Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous. Letters, like men, have now an ancestry, and the ancestry of words, as of men, is often a very noble possession, making them capable of great things. Indeed, it has been said that the invention of writing is more important than all the victories ever won or constitutions devised by man. The history of writing is, in a way, the history of the human race, since in it are bound up, severally and together, the development of thought, of expression, of art, of intercommunication, and of mechanical invention."
I did start reading early, and yet if I have one regret it is that I didn't start reading even earlier, and read even more, much more, because I think it is one of the weirdest and yet one of the most beautiful things in the world. Have you ever thought how weird and beautiful reading is? Your eyes are able to scan these different symbols and construct the scenarios and concepts they describe in your mind. These concepts have the power to twist your emotions and make you laugh and cry and think. Now, in old age and stuck in one place, I read more than ever because reading gives me someplace to go when I have to stay where I am.
If reading has an image, it is a photograph taken in 1940, during the bombing of London in the Second World War, which shows the remains of a caved-in library. Through the torn roof can be seen ghostly buildings outside, and in the centre of the store is a heap of beams and crippled furniture. But the shells on the walls have held fast, and the books lined up seem unharmed. Three men are standing amidst the rubble: one, as if hesitant about which book to choose, is apparently reading the titles on the spines; another, wearing glasses, is reaching for a volume; the third is reading, holding an open book in his hands. They are not turning their backs on the war, or ignoring the destruction. They are not choosing the books over life outside. They are trying to persist against the obvious odds; they are asserting a common right to ask; they are attempting to find once again - among the ruins, in the astonished recognition that reading sometimes grants - an understanding.
This image, and others, is in Alberto Manguel's fascinating book "A History of Reading", which finishes, or rather, not finishes, with these words, "'The History of Reading', fortunately, has no end. After the final chapter and before the already-mentioned copious index, our author has left a number of blank pages for the reader to add further thoughts on reading, subjects obviously missed, apposite quotations, events and characters still in the future. There is some consolation in that. I imagine leaving the book by the side of my bed, I imagine opening it up tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after that, and saying to myself, 'It's not finished.'"
To read or not to read, that is a silly question.
P.S. Other books by Alberto Manguel:
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
The Library at Night
All Men are Liars
The City of Words
A Reading Diary
Reading Pictures
Into the Looking-glass Wood
Stevenson under the Palm Trees
News from a Foreign Country came
The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories
The Penguin Book of Summer Stories
(... and there are many more, some of which are available at very reasonable second-hand prices from thriftbooks.com - unfortunately, the high shipping costs from the USA to Australia kill it for me!)
