The joy of a library and of books

“And I love the library better than any other room in the house. I love the smell and feel of it and the throng of happy ghosts who I like to imagine are with me here. It always surprises me that they don’t step visibly from the books they wrote. When I take only one book from the shelves, the whole lot of them seem to me to be tinglingly alive, not only the man who walks beside me as I carry his book to my chair. Craftsmen are deeply united, I think, and rejoice in each other’s artifacts from one generation to another.” The Scent of Water, Elizabeth Goudge