Scribbles in the Margins: 50 Eternal Delights of Books SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARDS!
By Daniel Gray
3.5/5
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About this ebook
We lead increasingly time-poor lifestyles, bombarded 24/7 by petrifying news bulletins, internet trolls and endless noises. Where has the joy and relaxation gone from our daily lives? Scribbles in the Margins offers a glorious antidote to that relentless modern-day information churn. It is here to remind you that books and bookshops can still sing to your heart.
Warm, heartfelt and witty, here are fifty short essays of prose poetry dedicated to the simple joy to be found in reading and the rituals around it. These are not wallowing nostalgia; they are things that remain pleasurable and right, that warm our hearts and connect us to books, to reading and to other readers: smells of books, old or new; losing an afternoon organising bookshelves; libraries; watching a child learn to read; reading in bed; impromptu bookmarks; visiting someone's home and inspecting the bookshelves; stains and other reminders of where and when you read a book.
An attempt to fondly weigh up what makes a book so much more than paper and ink – and reading so much more than a hobby, a way of passing time or a learning process – these declarations of love demonstrate what books and reading mean to us as individuals, and the cherished part they play in our lives, from the vivid greens and purples of childhood books to the dusty comfort novels we turn to in times of adult flux.
Scribbles in the Margins is a love-letter to books and bookshops, rejoicing in the many universal and sometimes odd little ways that reading and the rituals around reading make us happy.
Daniel Gray
Daniel Gray is a writer, broadcaster and magazine editor from York. He has published a host of critically acclaimed books on football and social history, edits Nutmeg magazine and presents the When Saturday Comes podcast. Daniel has presented history programmes on television and written for the BBC. His previous book, The Silence of the Stands, was shortlisted for Football Book of the Year at the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards 2023. @d_gray_writer
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Reviews for Scribbles in the Margins
16 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Any true book-lover will fully relate to these beautifully written 50 delights of books.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In these 50 short essays, Daniel Gray talks about the ways that book lovers are people of habit. We have preferred spots to read in comfortable chairs, favourite authors that you read regardless, cherished bookmarks and those little rituals that any bookworm goes through that to others seem pointless.
So if you want to know about why people smell books, the protocols behind inspecting other peoples bookshelves and if there is a right point to give up on a book then this is a good place to start. But there is more, the delights in finding a dedication from one unknown person from another, poses questions that hang in the air, the joys of starting a crisp new book, the dilemmas and joys of choosing books to take on holiday trying to see what the person on the tube opposite you, is reading. Something that happens a fair amount in my house is trying to hide purchases from my (thankfully tolerant) another half. It is more of an art form now.
I really enjoyed this delightful little book on the things that bookworms do. It has a certain charm and is really funny at times. If you are book obsessed then you'll smile and maybe even wince at some of the truths that he speaks. If you want to understand that person in your life who is obsessed by these rectangular pieces of sliced trees then this is a good place to start. 3.5 stars. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As the author states at the beginning the book's purpose is to give the reader reasons to be joyful, or at least smile. As such, this is a book of 50 short essays about the different joys of books: owning them, reading them, giving them, shelving them. Defacing Writing in them. The writing is a bit flowery - think G.K. Chesterton lite - but still (or because of, depending on your feelings about Chesterton's style) a joy to read. My personal favourite was "Sneaking new books past loved ones" as I found that one a tiny bit more relevant than the others. ;-)