CURMUDGUCATION: Solnit, Books, Rand, and Young Readers

CURMUDGUCATION: Solnit, Books, Rand, and Young Readers

Solnit, Books, Rand, and Young Readers

If you are not a regular follower of Brain Pickings, you should be. Thoughtful and erudite and really, really human, the site has for over a decade presented Maria Popova's essays spun off the works of others. I've met many authors I was glad to know on her site.

This post focuses on author Rebecca Solnit and A Velocity of Being, a collection of 121 illustrated letters written to young readers. Periodically something wakes up my teacher brain, and like an amputees phantom limb it leaps up to say, "Ooo! You should get that for the classroom" before I remember that I know longer have a classroom into which I can out such things (I do, however, have children and grandchildren.) It's about why we read and how books transform us, and Popova quotes from Solnit's letter about how books helped through a difficult childhood.

The books of my childhood were bricks, not for throwing but for building. I piled the books around me for protection and withdrew inside their battlements, building a tower in which I escaped my unhappy circumstances. There I lived for many years, in love with books, taking refuge in books, learning from books a strange data-rich out-of-date version of what it means to be human. Books gave me refuge. Or I built refuge out of them, out of these books that were both bricks and magical spells, protective spells I spun around myself. They can be doorways and ships and fortresses for anyone who loves them.

"A strange data-rich out-of-date version of what it means to be human" might be my new favorite CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Solnit, Books, Rand, and Young Readers