“What a pleasure it will be, thirty years hence, to open The Joy of Cooking to page 581 and behold part of the actual egg yolk that my daughter glopped into her very first batch of blueberry muffins at age twenty-two months!” (Fadiman 42).
This quote is from “Never do That to a Book” by Fadiman and it displays how Fadiman overall has more of a carnal love for books which is explained in the story as someone who is not to strict about the condition of their books. For example, they would have them facedown at times when there not reading, they would write in them, and they would fold pages. This love is the exact opposite of courtly love which is someone who cares for books in such a way you would handle a baby. They would never crease a page or put too big of a bookmark in it as it may ruin the spine. To me this reading opened my mind and it brought a lot more respect to me for books that I never saw before. I always saw a book as a book and nothing more. I think I will still have more of a carnal approach when handling books because I do agree that a worn-out appearance is a good condition for a book that has been used and read, it shows “genuine love” (Faidman 42). One thing I don’t understand or agree with is that someone should by two copies so that only one needs to be subjected to stress. Faidman is overall telling the audience in first person, many different ways, that there are two different types of people when it comes to this subject and also gives one’s own opinion on how both, carnal and courtly apply to her.
Kristy, good post! How do you treat a book you're using for school? Do you mark in it, highlight, fold down pages?
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