Already as a young girl I had this specific love for libraries, though I’m scared they don’t love me back that much because I always seem to forget to get the books back on time… But anyway, being in a library felt like an adventurous gateway to all this different worlds and lives.
As a kid you make a decision on whether you like the cover or not, or on the amount of nice pictures in a book. When you grow older, the content starts to matter more and more, until it is the only thing that counts.
So last week I went to a library as if I was six years old again. Not thinking about a topic, just looking around and seeing which book catches my eye. And after some sniffing around, I found it: the book I didn’t know I wanted. On the uttermost left corner of a bottom shelf of the graphic design section, it was hiding. It had a small cover made out of a black fabric, like a luxurious pocket size notebook. But when I grabbed it, it didn’t seem to stop! Thinking it was a small notebook; it appeared twice as long as I thought it would be. Completely black, even the letters on the cover were black. It said: ‘Vladimir Navokov’. Given the fact that I found this booklet in the graphic design section, I would say, it is a rather odd place for a book of this old Russian writer.
The explanation would soon follow, because when I opened the book, it appeared to be filled with beautiful descriptions of fantasy’s Nabokov had when he thought of a specific letter. Each description came along with an illustration of the described letter. It seemed to be a new dimension of learning how to read.
This whole booklet breathes a sense of care and love for detail, a feature I can relay to a lot when I think of my own work. Even the smell is part of it. Exploring a publication on every detail you can find in the cover and layout, but without really knowing the content. And when I was studying this book, on the ground of the graphic design section of the library, I felt like I was six years old again.
Rietveld Library cat.nr: 757.3
