Ruminations of a Reader

by

Lauren Roberts 

There’s something about the book that lends itself to any place, any season, any time, any accompaniment because reading is—and always has been—more than the physical act of perusing words. It is a world of fingertips caressing paper, of eyes savoring the impression of black ink on white or cream paper, and of a mind meeting another in a format that cements that melding rather than dividing it. That world is a poignant one filled with the beauty of physical sensations and mental auras. Batteries not needed.

To read is to be soothed; to be taken away to a distant time and land; it is to feel aroused, amused, intrigued, angered; to be held captive by threads of language strung together in a perfect weave; it is to be emotionally taken apart and put back together. It is, in short, an experience unlike any other, and it is best begun young.

One of my few childhood memories is of my mother reading to me—when she could get time away from a growing family. I was the oldest of five children who, because my parents were Catholic and it was the early 1950s, came along with regularity. My father worked for AT&T, my mother stayed home, and in between bouts of diaper rash, shopping, meals, laundry, housework and probably occasional despair at the seemingly endless drudgery of it all, my mother taught me to love not only books but the sweet richness of the reading experience. Even before I knew the words, I understood the pictures. Books about the moon or Mars took me there through my dreams long before NASA existed. The Fun to Cook Book opened a path to the gourmet world that is part of my life today. I lived lives that were not yet possible for me to live at that time. 

In second grade, I was fortunate to have had a teacher who stressed reading above all else. Known to me only through my mother's memories, this woman, whose influence still burns brightly decades later, instilled in her students a love not only of content, but of books’ tactility. We were taught to revere them as sacred, taught how to open a new book by gently pressing open the front and then the back covers, cautiously lifting each page from those that followed. Her view of books as objects of appreciation themselves still manifests itself in the rituals I employ in the handling of any new book.

I must have fallen hard for that teacher because not even my first driver’s license was more important than my first library card. For a long time I read nearly everything I could get my hands on which, I suppose, was part of the discovery and learning process. I couldn’t know what I liked or disliked until I had sufficient exposure to it. So I traversed a lot of territory—not all of it voluntarily—from  history to Hemingway, from travel books to mysteries, from the Canterbury Tales to Twelfth Night, from Jack Kerouac to Frances Lappe, from science fiction to nonfiction.

I came to view books as a source of wonder, of knowledge, of exposure to things and times and places  that I had yet to see for myself. It was the ability of books to paint pictures and feelings that stayed with me even as I moved on from my favorite Nancy Drew stories to more sophisticated fare.

Passing on this love is why I started this web site and why I am writing this column. Professional resources estimate the number of books published in 2005 will reach and perhaps exceed 200,000. Of that number, approximately half are geared to the reading public. Even leaving out self- and vanity-published books that never see the inside of a bookstore, that is an incredible number.

How  many of them are worth reading? And of those, how many will you miss simply because they never make it into the tiny spotlight of national reviews? The answer: too many.

Bibliobuffet.com is the collaboration of a number of fervent readers who are also excellent writers. What we have in common is our love of reading, passion for the written word in book form, and a desire to share what we believe to be our educated opinions about some of those still-to-be discovered books.

In “Reviews & Reflections,” I plan to share some of my personal treasures with you. In turn, I am asking you to share with me those you have discovered—and want to see reviewed. I will explore facets of reading and books beyond reviews (which is why  this column is entitled “Reviews & Reflections”). Most of all, I want this column to be reader-oriented and reader-responsive. While I cannot promise to review any particular book or cover a specific subject, I am open to hearing from you. Let me know what you think as I get under way beginning next week.

Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it