A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books PDF
Preview A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books
A PASSION FOR B O O K S • • • A BOOK LOVER'S TREASURY OF STORIES, ESSAYS, HUMOR, LORE, AND LISTS ON COLLECTING, READING, BORROWING, LENDING, CARING FOR, AND APPRECIATING BOOKS EDITED BY HAROLD RABINOWITZ ROB KAPLAN AND FOREWORD BY RAY BRADBURY <.A" Passion for 'Books A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan TI M E SIf9j]BOOKS RANDOM HOUSE Copyright © 1999 byThe Reference Works Foreword copyright © 1999 by Ray Bradbury All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States byTimes Books, adivision of Random House, Inc., NewYork, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House ofCanada Limited,Toronto. Owing to limitations ofspace, permission acknowledgments for previously published material can be found on pages 351-353. ISBN 0-8129-3112-2 Random House websiteaddress: www.randomhouse.com Printed in the United States ofAmerica on acid-free paper 9 876 5 4 3 2 BOOK DESIGN BY DEBBIE GLASSERMAN SPECIALSALES Times Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions or premiums. Special editions, including personalized covers, excerpts ofexisting books, and corporate imprints, can be created in large quantities for special needs. For more information, write to Special Markets,Times Books, 201 East 50th Street, NewYork, NewYork 10022, or call 800-800-3246. TO THE MEMORY OF CHAIM GRADE, Great Soul, Great Poet, Greatfew, and Great Friend HR TO JOSHUA, who isjust beginning to appreciate thejoys ofreading andbooks RAK Without books, Godissilent, justice dormant, naturalscienceata stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, andallthings involvedin darkness. THOMAS V. BARTHOLIN Disparage no book, for it is also apartofthe world. RABBI NACHMAN OF BRATZLAV Foreword BY RAY BRADBURY Back in 1953 when I had finished a longer version of my novel Fahrenheit 451, I sought a metaphor for my artist friend Joe Mu gnaini that would be appropriate to the text. Glancing through his sketches, I fused acombined metaphor: a neo-Don Quixote armored in newspaper print standing on a pyre ofburning books. That chap isn't really a faux Don Quixote, it's me. My history is all books, and rarely anything else, which is why I am up front here, as preface. The women in my life have all been librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. If they couldn't speak pidgin Tolstoy, articulate HenryJames, or give me directions to Usher and Ox, it was no go. I have always longed for education, and pillow talk's the best. I found my wife, Marguerite (Maggie), in Fowler Bros. marvelous bookshop across from San Francisco's Pershing Square in the happy spring of 1946. She took a vow of poverty to marry me in 1947. Church-mice-poor, we lived in Venice before it was a funny-farm, surviving on hot dogs, pizza, and bad wine while I constructed liter ary rockets that missed the Moon but somehow reached Mars. Along the way I increased my library with ten-cent and quarter purchases of much needed books at the Goodwill. Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Shaw marked down seemed to me as one oflife's un believable bargains. [ ix]
The list of books you might like
