Comfort books help us to get through what Nietzsche called ‘the horror of living’. Montaigne, in his tower library, called his favourite books ‘the best munition I have in this human peregrination’. Sometimes we carry them around like amulets: Alexander the Great carried his Homer on his wanderings – a book full of nostalgia, a word meaning literally longing for home.
[nog typen t/m ‘we enjoyed ourselves’]
[uit The Bookseller’s Tale – Martin Latham]