The other day we tried to persuade our 17 year old grandson to borrow an Asimov science fiction book. No good! I” can’t remember when I last read a book”, he told us. How odd! we thought. His older sister, Granddaughter Number Two is never without a book. Both were read to as small children. So it’s nothing to do with his never having been encouraged. It may be something to do with his eyesight problems not being recognised until he was about 7. Maybe the difficulty in deciphering what was on the page prevented a real love of books from becoming properly embedded. Mind you, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t watch many films or TV series either. Perhaps he just doesn’t like stories any longer, unless they are part of an action packed computer game. He does, however, play chess online now, he revealed to us the other day, picking up on a hobby he gave up when he moved from primary to secondary school.
I always find it interesting how differently children brought up in the same way by the same parents can turn out. We have an old toy farm set in a box, the usual mix of tractors, farm machinery, animals and people. We probably bought it years ago when Granddaughter Number One was tiny and it has come out at different times for each grandchild in turn. The most recent users have been Granddaughter Number Four (now aged 6) and Grandson Number Two (now aged 3). The former used to sort out the animals, occasionally the people as well but mostly the animals, into family groups and organise story telling games where small animals were lost and found, were mischievous, had adventures and so on. The latter totally ignores the animals and concentrates on the tractors and machinery. Sometimes the tractors are involved in games with other wheeled vehicles, in which they talk to each other and go on journeys and adventures. At other times he examines the machinery quite scientifically and has long discussions with us about what the machinery is used for.
Some might say it’s just the difference between girls and boys but there has certainly been no conscious gender-stereotyping going on in their upbringing. It seems to be just the way they are. Grandson Number Two is bold and adventurous, ready to set off at a run or to climb (although he tells me that he was frightened of the aeroplane he travelled in to go on holiday) while his sister is rather cautious and likes to know that she will be able to achieve whatever physical feat is required. Similarly Granddaughter Number Four has always drawn or painted careful pictures of recognisable animals and figures while her small brother is just wild and gleeful in his use of paints and pens, broad splashes and splodges representing nothing in particular but fixated on one particular colour: black for the felt tip pens and red for the paints. He has been very disappointed recently to discover he has used up all the red from the paintbox!
Ah, but how boring life would be if they all turned out exactly the same, like little clones.
All of that has taken me away from the subject of books, which was prompted by this article about a first edition of Robert Burns’s poetry found in a barber’s shop in the late 19th century and which has now gone on display in Fife.
It’s missing the first fifty pages as the barber was apparently tearing them put and using them to clean his razors! Clearly not a great lover of poetry or of books! My father would have had a fit at the idea of anyone using pages of books in such a fashion. And yet the poems would still have existed, printed in other editions. It’s odd and yet understandable how we have a kind of reverence for old or particularly beautiful editions of books. I have been trying not to buy books in the last few years. We simply do not have shelf space for any more. This does not stop Phil from acquiring yet more chess books nor from purchasing “nice” hardback editions of books we already own in dilapidated paperback form.
So I have been making better use of my library card. And, of course, there is always my kindle. However, much as I love my kindle for travelling (how else could I carry enough reading matter for two weeks in my hand-luggage-only allowance? Our son used to sacrifice holiday clothes for holiday reading in pre-kindle times!), I much prefer to read an actual book, even the big fat ones that refuse to stay open easily on my knee while I knit and read at the same time or which threaten to give me concussion if I drop them on my head while reading in bed.
Granddaughter Number Two, the one who is never without a book, agrees with me on this. Amazingly she is not a member of the library, unlike her two smallest siblings, but explains this by saying she loves to own books. Like her grandfather, she waxes lyrical about the embossing on hardback covers or about the colour of the edges of pages. Like us, she is running out of shelf space. So far this is just in her bedroom but one day, all being well, she will be a house-owner in her own right and will probably fill her dwelling with books.
That is all the future, however, by which time she may well have decided to “inherit” our collection. So, it goes.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
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