Carl Sagan is perhaps best known for his book "Cosmos" which contains the memorable quote, "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
Page 281 of the same book contains another equally memorable quote:
"If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime ... The trick is to know which books to read."
I have yet to learn that trick, as I randomly buy more and more books. Recent additions to my library include Michael Harris' "The End of Absence", Tim Marshall's "Prisoners of Geography", "Solitude" (another Michael Harris book), and, on a lighter note, "Whatever happened to Margo?", a humorous account by Margaret Durrell - one of the famous Durrells of Corfu - of her experiences as a Bournemouth landlady in the late 1940s. Maybe the trick is to know when to stop buying books!
P.S. You may wish to listen to the audiobook "Cosmos" here and here.
P.P.S. I could listen to the man all day long - click here.
