A Library Mouse

As we say in Italian, or, in English – a bookworm, a mostly harmless beast, usually found in libraries and bookshops, or gravitating around bookshelves and bedside tables.

The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about libraries. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!

Daunt Books in Marylebone, London, one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world. Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash

The library mouse tends to snoop around in other people’s houses, just in case it can catch a glimpse of a wonderful, not yet discovered, unread book, something we’ve all done, one time or another… no? Just me then.

We were playing hide-and-seek at my then best friend Catia’s, and while I was looking for a nook in which to conceal myself in her bedroom, the wondrous cover of a novel, titled Il calice d’argento (The Silver Chalice), captured my attention. The cover showed three resplendent knights on horses, and promised adventures in faraway lands, magic, and all sorts of shiny things. I took the book and started reading it, when Catia found me. “Don’t read, come play with us!”

After that day, whenever Catia called us to her house, I used to sneak away to try and read that book, but every time she managed to find me, and scolded me: “Why are you always reading, we’re not at school, put the book away, I’ll lend it to you later, let’s play!”, but I was terrified to borrow the book, because my mum would have surely thought I’d stolen it, and she was only too happy to have an excuse to vent her inexhaustible list of grievances on poor, powerless, pathetic 7-year old me. And so I never got to read The Silver Chalice.

I had taken to reading like a duck to water or, in my case, like a silverfish to paper. I had soon managed to read and re-read all of my children books at home, and those from my school library. I was hungry for more: encyclopaedias – where I used to skip most pages, but was entranced by the part on Greek mythology, the first of my special interests –, the telephone directory and the Yellow Pages (who does remember them?), the Italian dictionary were all welcome distractions, but I had caught the literary bug, and I wanted stories and tales, characters and plots (not that I was aware of any literary devices back then), places and atmospheres.

I started ploughing through our bookshelves at home, my dad had always been a voracious reader too, and we had lot of books in translation. I remember my first grown-up novel, it was Come, My Beloved by Pearl S. Buck. I was too young to appreciate the author’s writing, or to understand most of the novel’s plot, but I gathered that India was a fascinating, beautiful Country, and that preaching the Word of God doesn’t necessarily mean putting it into practice.

Then I found a collection of classic Japanese plays. The one I read was a doomed love story between a beautiful woman (probably, a courtesan, although I couldn’t have said what a courtesan was) and a noble warrior. In the end, they kill themselves, stabbing each other with a dagger, after having tied themselves together. I was so upset that I couldn’t read any further in the book, and it took me quite a long time to rediscover the many jewels of Japanese literature.

Finally – I was 8 or 9 by then – I found the novel that cemented my love of literature once and for all, and my preference for big tomes, big ideas, a multitude of characters, long descriptions, and even longer digressions – Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Naturally, there were lots of things I couldn’t understand: how could Fantine have baby Cosette, when she wasn’t married? What was the deal with merciless Javert? Why did hardworking, basically good people have to live in abject poverty, why did they have to steal, in order to save themselves and their families from starvation?

The latter questions, which still haunt me, brought me years later to my beloved Russian novelists. In the meanwhile, teenage me had become an assiduous visitor of our city library, where I could borrow the volumes with Shakespeare’s tragedies, comedies, and sonnets. I’m aware how those grand names make me sound all highfalutin, but nobody had either the faintest idea, or ever showed any interest at all in my reading habits. I had no one to impress.

Since the days of my early infatuation with Greek mythology, I’d been told time and again by other kids (and quite a lot of adults) that no one cared about those things other than me, that they were useless, boring, and stupid. So I learned to keep my mouth shut, knowing I had a secret that could expose me as a pretentious, self-important smart-arse. As a matter of fact, I’ve always thought that “pretentious” and “smart-arse” are compliments, but when you’re that young, it’s like walking with a bullseye on your back and your front.

I still love reading, it’s one of my physiological needs. I passed this love on to my daughter, although her literary taste differs a bit from mine. But it’s fine, it makes for many interesting conversations.

Have you ever been stung by the Bookish Bee? What are your first memories of being read to/reading yourself? Do you still love it? Let me know all about it in the comments!

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