I still have a love for tree-books. Teresa and everyone I know are touting the magical properties of their Kindles (can the plural simply be Kindle, like moose or aircraft?) but I still buy books in all their original tree-killing glory. I make many claims to why like them; I love the smell of a book, I don’t have to plug it in… but the truth is, when the collapse comes and the grid fails, I’ve got a book that tells me how to plant crops, multiple books on astronomy, etc… you’ve got about three hours of battery life to figure out EVERYTHING you’re going to need, EVER.
As I pick up more and more books on religion, I worry about posthumous speculations about my intentions. I read about Mormons dedicating souls of heathen family members after they die and I wonder, what happens when I die and they come to collect my stuff? Will they see the hundreds of books on religion and the fact that many of them are Christian instructional books and try to say that I was a closet faithful? I’ve got thirteen different Bibles. I just picked up a 1948 copy of Corda in Coelo. It’s full of prayers and even has someone’s name on the inside cover [Name or dedication in the cover + old = special] When I came across a particularly interesting book of 365 children’s Bible activities, I gave it to my mother who was teaching Sunday School in her church. Last year I picked up all of the Catholic Missal service books and I’m not checking it every day but I’m following along from time to time.
I’m interested in religion as a psychosis. I’m fascinated by how captivated people become and how violent they react when their delusion (from my outside point of view) is challenged. Religion is a hobby of mine but I never again want to be counted among its followers.
After all of this, I’m sure someone will explain away all my words and justify a claim that I somehow tripped into a Heavenly loophole. I understand, it makes people feel better about death and what does it matter to me that they go through my library and think to themselves that I may not have strayed so far from the religion of my youth?
I just wonder what they’ll say when they get to the thirty or forty books on Nazi Germany…
September 29th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
That’s weird, I just had a Fahrenheit 451 exchange on Facebook a few hours ago.
September 29th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
I saw that and actually thought it was because of this post. Cool!
September 30th, 2011 at 11:18 am
No, I have iGoogle as my home page, and it has a quote widget. A Bradbury quote came up, that sent me off on a bit of reading some of Mr. Bradburys works and thoughts and I came across that F. 451 quote and decided to post it.
I hadn’t read it in ages, so I thought I’d remind everyone of an old friend and the i Robot reference was another old friend from the same era of my life.