The Power of Books

Words: Ed Fordham

There is something very special about sitting down of an evening in a comfy chair and taking a book in your hand. You know at that point you are relaxing. Opening the cover, turning the pages and reading the words or admiring the pictures and images is itself an act of relaxation. But it is also an act of exploration. You might be renewing your knowledge of a topic; you might be reading a story for the very first time – but it is a good thing.

Book, the means whereby we have shared individual learning, knowledge and imagination and placed it into the hands of someone else. This conveyance of knowledge, of ideas, of beauty is really quite special and it continues to this day. I'm often asked if books are going out of fashion –there is certainly no evidence of this at face value. There are other means of learning information, of sharing knowledge – but for choice, self-taught, or learning at your own pace, the book continues to win. If your are not sure you can go back and check. If its a story or a poem, you can re-read it. If it’s a book of art you can view it again and again or see new and hidden elements. Indeed when it comes to shared experience, we still enjoy the act of one or two people reading a poem or play to us. The act of that shared experience itself adding to our memory. It has the good fortune to see several times the poet Adrian Mitchell and without a doubt his performance of his own poetry was what made it memorable…

If you haven’t read it I would urge you to go find it… he takes the charmed life of the 1950’s and infuses it with the fears of science and the cold war and creates an image of boys becoming men, and how terrifying that is…

'Where are they now, the heroes of furrypaged books and comics brighter than life which packed my ink-lined desk in days when BOP meant Boys' Own Paper, where are they anyway?

Where is Percy F. Westerman? Where are H. L. Gee and Arthur Mee?

Where is Edgar Rice (the Warlord of Mars) Burroughs, the Bumper Fun Book and the Wag's Handbook? Where is the Wonder Book of Reptiles? Where the hell is the Boy's Book of Bacteriological Warfare?'

To read these words aloud I hear my own voice, but also recalls my memory of seeing Adrian Mitchell, the author, read this poem to the audience of the event I was at.

Last week a lady came to the shop to buy some picture books and some poetry books. She was buying for her father. He has dementia and she wanted images of places he had been to and poems that he knew. Her aim was that the shared experience of her going through those images would recall his travels of his earlier life, and her voice reading poems he knew would recall his enjoyment of poems he knew. This is the power of books, of words and of each other.

When we read a book and see an image, we create a memory – it is seared into our brain – and books, voices, music act as a trigger to bring them back to us.

So whatever your purpose, learning, relaxation, pleasure, or even time with an ageing parent or friend, there are many roles for a book – they are all valid, all different, and each individual to us.

See you soon, Ed Fordham, Proprietor.

Brockwell Books of Chesterfield can be found in The Market Hall, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, S40 1AR.

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