1 year ago
36
There. Can you smell it? It’s bitter and somehow peppery. The scent of pages beginning to curl at the edges and paper turning brown. The first faint curls of smoke in the evening air. Out along the street, the flickering orange light of torches is drawing near. It’s the season for book murder.
A book that can’t be read is a dead book. It doesn’t matter if that book is locked away in a storage locker or reduced to a pile of ashes any more than it matters if a person is buried or cremated. Dead is dead. A book is a tool for moving ideas between two minds—not just ideas, but perspectives, empathy, and understanding. We cannot see through someone else’s eyes … except that we can with books. They are the defining instrument of civilization. Repressing them is the defining act of barbarism.
Those who murder books always have their reasons. They are always the same reasons.
