Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote 

……………………………………………….

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

[When April with sweet showers. . .Then folks long to go on pilgrimage]

Chaucer, General Prologue

And so, with the start of April, this traveler longs to go on a journey, a pilgrimage of sorts, a literary pilgrimage to Reykjavik.  The 16th iteration of the Reykjavik International Literary Festival is mere weeks away.  The panel topics look to be thoughtful and engaging:  questions of power and authority, historical reality and historical fiction, reader reaction to horror–and that’s just the first evening. The festival is a celebration of literature and reading, which brings me today’s thoughts. 

In her “Message to Readers” prologues in both The Bookshop on the Corner and The Bookshop on the Shore, Jenny Colgan (one of the participants in RILF) discusses the joys of reading and where one might best enjoy what types of books.  She acknowledges the delight one might have in holding and reading from a physical book, but she also discusses the pleasures of reading on an e-reader and listening to audio-books.  One of the upsides she points out about e-readers is that you can have your entire library in a device that weighs about 200 grams.  As she sees it, the downside of watching people read on their e-readers or smart phones is the inability to see what they’re actually reading.  I feel a bit sheepish about asking someone what they’re reading on their e-reader.  But I have no qualms about asking people about the physical books they are reading.

I’ve been introduced to several authors based on asking people what they think about the (physical) book they’re reading.  I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which in 2008 achieved its commercial success largely based on word-of-mouth, because I asked the young woman sitting next to me on a coach from New York City to Philadelphia what the book was about and whether she was enjoying the read.  I read Jo Nesbo’s The Redbreast based on a conversation with the Norwegian man sitting next to me on an Icelandair flight to Newark.  The result of both conversations was that I avidly consumed both series–Larson’s and Nesbo’s–and worried more about Lisbeth Salander and Harry Hole than I worried about my own kids.

So, how to consume books? E-reader or physical book or audio-book? It depends on what I expect the author’s world to do for me.  If I’m working on my textile projects or planning a road trip, I opt for audio-books.  I buy physical books if they appear to be titles that I’d likely read again or pass along to fellow readers.  I buy downloadable books if I’m looking for portability.  Each of my handbags is large enough to accommodate my kindle in addition to  the normal handbag-stuff. 

Between my e-reader, physical books, and audio-books, I’m getting ready to be thoroughly engaged with the ideas about reading and literature at the Reykjavik International Literary Festival.  Next up is The Book of Reykjavik, a 2021 volume in the “Reading the City” series published by Comma Press UK.

 Let us read, and let us dance;

these two amusements will never do

any harm to the world.

–Voltaire, epigraph in The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan