Confessions of a Book-Lover
1913
In an age when reading was a solitary refuge rather than a social media metric, E. Walter Walters composed this tender, unsentimental meditation on what it means to love books with genuine devotion. Written in 1913, the essay unfolds as a quiet confession: the author reflecting on loneliness, on the peculiar comfort found in the company of printed pages, on the way certain volumes become indistinguishable from the people we love. Walters possesses the rare gift of articulating what bibliophiles feel but rarely voice, that reading is not merely consumption but communion, a way of surviving the world by retreating into worlds more coherent than our own. His observations on what separates casual readers from true book-lovers remain remarkably acute, capturing a devotion that borders on the sacred. The prose has the measured pace of someone who understands that some truths unfold slowly, like the best sentences in the best books. For anyone who has ever felt more understood by a novel than by the people in their life, this slight volume offers the quiet validation of recognition.
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“Emerson tried to teach us that there can be infinite beauties in a little space”
— E. Walter Walters
“The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books.””
— E. Walter Walters
“Each of us will make his own shelf of books. The book for me is the book that delights, attracts, soothes, or uplifts me.””
— E. Walter Walters
“one of the most pleasant qualities of a reader who has lived among books all his life is that he does not attempt always to recommend books to others, or to preach about them.””
— E. Walter Walters
“A constant reader is one who always returns to his first loves.””
— E. Walter Walters
“In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I have never read any good book that was not related intimately to at least a score of other books. It is true that in a measure a book gives to us what we take to it; and we can only take much out of it when we approach the group of ministering authors who alone make life both cheerful and endurable.””
— E. Walter Walters
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Walters, E. Walter. Confessions of a Book-Lover. Lex, lex-books.com/book/confessions-of-a-book-lover-4c34dcf1-5256-47e5-9daf-81457d920723.Walters, E. W. (1913). Confessions of a Book-Lover. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/confessions-of-a-book-lover-4c34dcf1-5256-47e5-9daf-81457d920723Walters, E. Walter. Confessions of a Book-Lover. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/confessions-of-a-book-lover-4c34dcf1-5256-47e5-9daf-81457d920723.
