“Cover your bookcases with rugs and linens of fine quality;
preserve them from dampness and mice and injury;
for it is your books that are your true treasure.”
Ibn Tibbon 1120-1190?
Spanish Jewish Scholar
The Love of Books
Among old friends — my books and me.
Am I one of a dying breed? I don’t just love reading — I love books as objects.
I love the smell of new pages, but perhaps even more that unmistakable scent of an old book that has already passed through other hands and other lives. I have always had a particular affection for old and forgotten books — not necessarily the great classics, which are continually reprinted, but books that somehow survived while the world around them changed.
C.S. Lewis once made the point that we should read old books because they offer us a different perspective on life and the world. Of course they contain the errors and prejudices of their own time, but those are often easier for us to recognise than the assumptions and prejudices of our own age. Old books allow us, for a moment, to look at the present from somewhere else. And for me, a book has always been more than its words.I notice the typeface, the paper, the binding and the illustrations. I can be captivated by a beautifully designed cover before I have read a single sentence. There is a quiet promise in a book you have not yet opened: an entire world waiting between two covers.
Where It Began, my love of books goes back to childhood.
I remember my father reading almost every evening. And every Saturday afternoon, when I was still a young boy, he would take me to the library. We could spend hours there, wandering among the shelves and looking through books. Those afternoons stayed with me.One of my most vivid childhood memories is discovering that I could actually read — that those mysterious little marks on a page had suddenly become words, sentences and stories. Later, at school, I remember counting the minutes until I could go home and continue whatever book I was reading. As a child, my head was almost permanently buried in a book or magazine. Not much has changed.
A House Full of Books
Over the years, books gradually found their way into almost every corner of our home. What began with a few shelves eventually became the library you see in the photograph. It is not a carefully planned collection in the bibliophile sense, but rather the accumulation of a lifetime of curiosity. History, archaeology, genealogy, medicine, travel, art, photography, diving and, of course, books about DNA and human origins all have their place on the shelves.
I rarely throw a book away. Many of them are connected with a particular period of my life: books I used while studying medicine, books bought before or after a journey, books that helped me with my genealogical research, and others that simply caught my attention in a bookshop somewhere. Opening an old book can therefore be rather like opening an old photograph album. You remember not only what you read, but often where you were and who you were when you first read it. And although almost anything can now be found on a screen within seconds, I still prefer taking a real book from the shelf, feeling its weight and turning its pages. The internet is wonderful for finding information — I use it constantly — but for me it has never replaced the pleasure of a book.
Perhaps I really am one of a dying breed.
If so, I am quite happy to remain one.
Books
Books
Books
A Window onto Other Worlds
A really good book can still make the rest of the world disappear for an evening. I remain fascinated by language — by its power, its precision and the almost infinite range of things we can express with words. Perhaps most remarkable of all is our ability to enter someone else’s imagination. Through a few hundred printed pages we can travel to another country, another century or even another world — and, for a while, see it through somebody else’s eyes. Reading also taught me something that has remained important throughout my life:to be curious.
One book leads to another. One answer produces another question. History leads to archaeology, archaeology to human migration, genealogy to DNA — and suddenly a question that began on one page has become a journey of its own. Books taught me that learning does not end when you leave school. If anything, that is when it really begins.I still love opening a book I have never read before. I still love old libraries and shelves filled with volumes whose contents I don’t yet know. And I still find it remarkable that something as simple as ink on paper can preserve another person’s thoughts for decades — sometimes for centuries.Perhaps the printed book really is becoming less central in our digital world. But a dying breed?
I hope not.
And even if we are —
I am quite happy to be one of them
The Love of Books
Books as companions, curiosity, discovery and a lifetime of reading.
Am I one of a dying breed? I don’t just love reading — I love books as objects.
I love the smell of new pages, but perhaps even more that unmistakable scent of an old book that has already passed through other hands and other lives. I have always had a particular affection for old and forgotten books — not necessarily the great classics, which are continually reprinted, but books that somehow survived while the world around them changed.
C.S. Lewis once made the point that we should read old books because they offer us a different perspective on life and the world. Of course they contain the errors and prejudices of their own time, but those are often easier for us to recognise than the assumptions and prejudices of our own age. Old books allow us, for a moment, to look at the present from somewhere else.
And for me, a book has always been more than its words. I notice the typeface, the paper, the binding and the illustrations. I can be captivated by a beautifully designed cover before I have read a single sentence. There is a quiet promise in a book you have not yet opened: an entire world waiting between two covers.
Where It Began
My love of books goes back to childhood. I remember my father reading almost every evening. And every Saturday afternoon, when I was still a young boy, he would take me to the library. We could spend hours there, wandering among the shelves and looking through books. Those afternoons stayed with me. One of my most vivid childhood memories is discovering that I could actually read — that those mysterious little marks on a page had suddenly become words, sentences and stories. Later, at school, I remember counting the minutes until I could go home and continue whatever book I was reading.As a child, my head was almost permanently buried in a book or magazine. Not much has changed.
A Window onto Other Worlds
A really good book can still make the rest of the world disappear for an evening. I remain fascinated by language — by its power, its precision and the almost infinite range of things we can express with words. Perhaps most remarkable of all is our ability to enter someone else’s imagination. Through a few hundred printed pages we can travel to another country, another century or even another world — and, for a while, see it through somebody else’s eyes. Reading also taught me something that has remained important throughout my life:to be curious.
One book leads to another. One answer produces another question. History leads to archaeology, archaeology to human migration, genealogy to DNA — and suddenly a question that began on one page has become a journey of its own. Books taught me that learning does not end when you leave school. If anything, that is when it really begins. I still love opening a book I have never read before. I still love old libraries and shelves filled with volumes whose contents I don’t yet know. And I still find it remarkable that something as simple as ink on paper can preserve another person’s thoughts for decades — sometimes for centuries.
Perhaps the printed book really is becoming less central in our digital world. But a dying breed? I hope not. And even if we are —I am quite happy to be one of them.
Surrounded by Books
Over the years, I have collected approximately 2,000 books on almost every subject imaginable. Some I bought new, some second-hand, some were given to me — and a few, I must confess, I simply forgot to give back. That is one of the pleasures of having so many books around: there is always something different waiting to be discovered. I particularly enjoy non-fiction books on obscure subjects I had never thought about before, as well as history, travel books and, of course, the classics that are always there to be read again. I also love visiting old libraries and archives. There is something almost magical about being surrounded by books that have survived for centuries. Beautiful bindings with elaborate spines, enormous volumes containing exquisite watercolours of exotic plants and birds, and medieval illuminated manuscripts with astonishingly detailed illustrations, painted with precious lapis lazuli and decorated with brilliant gold leaf. Sometimes the book itself is almost as fascinating as the words it contains.
Ten Books for a Desert Island?
There is an old question: If you could take only ten books to a desert island, knowing that you would remain there for the rest of your life, which ones would you choose? It sounds like a game, but there is a serious thought behind it. None of us has enough time to read all the books that have ever been written. In that sense, we are all standing in front of an impossibly large library with only a limited amount of time. So we had better choose well. Some books challenge the mind; others move us through the beauty of their language. Some help us understand the culture and history from which we came, while others change the way we look at the natural world. And then there are those rare books that can be read again and again, revealing something different each time because we ourselves have changed between readings.Perhaps those are the books I would take to my desert island. Although choosing only ten from two thousand might take me a while.
And There Are Always More to Read…
So yes, I love books. And as for reading, there are usually several books waiting on my bedside table. Few things are more enjoyable than climbing into a big comfortable bed at the end of the day with a good book, reading until Hélène joins me — or until the book slowly drops and I fall asleep. And the next evening?
I simply pick up where I left off.
Here are a few books I have finished or that I am reading now:
- The Storm of War, Andrew Roberts
- The Canal Builders, Julie Green
- Musch, Jean-Marc van Tol
- De Boerenoorlog, Martin Bosssenbroek
- Darkening Age, Catherine Nixey
- Lourdes, Ruth Harris
- William the Conqueror, David Bates
- Boreal ties, Kim Fairley Gilles & Silas Hibbard Ayer III
- Persians, Lloyd Llewellyn – Jones
- Hoogtij van Holland, Henk ‘t jong
- The Island at the Centre of the World, Russel Shorto
- Himalaya, Michael Palin
- From Peking to Paris, Kassia St. Clair
- Sixty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong, Jean Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
- The Zanzibar chest, Adrian Heartly
- The Templars, Dan Jones
- In the name of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy
- Sowing the Wind, The mismanagement of the Middle East, 1900-1960, John Keay
- The Fabric of the Cosmos, Space, Time and the Texture of Reality, Brian Greene
- De Bourgondiërs, Bart van Loo
- Brunelleschi’s Dome, how a Renaissance genius reinvented Architecture, Ross King
- The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, Cristopher Hibbert
- In search of Moby Dick, the quest for the white wale, Tim Severin
- No Peace no Honor, Nixon, Kissinger and betrayal in Vietnam, Larry Berman
- Salt, a World History, Mark Kurlansky
- John Adams, David McCullough
- The age of Gladiators, Savagery & Spectacle in Ancient Rome, Rupert Matthews
- The Yellow Cross, René Weis
- Batavia’s Graveyard, Mike Dash
“A library doesn’t need windows. A library is a window.”
Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn (1994), p. 33.
