TheLionRampant.net

Well the booksale is over. Can we all observe a moment of silence in respect for all the books that were not sold and go to who-knows-where?

Okay.

We’re done now.

Bryce and I stopped by on Friday for the 1/2 price day. I picked up a watercolour book for my mom, a Woolf book for fun, a Hawthorne novel I didn’t think I had (but I do — at least this copy is cool and old though and it was 75p), Elisabeth Elliot’s The Glad Surrender and Annie Dillard’s Living by Fiction. Man, I’m an eclectic reader. Total book count: 24. Bryce can tell you about the 50-some-odd books he bought for roughly 30 quid if he’s interested. I think used books are just as great as new ones; besides it being wonderful to own another book, used ones are worn and loved and have a story, kind of like the Velveteen Rabbit.

***

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

This entry was posted by Ashley on Saturday, May 21st, 2005 at 2:22 pm. This entry was tagged with Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.