Bookshops can provide explosive revelations

By Kathleen Noonan writing in the Courier Mail, Brisbane.
September 27, 2008

BOOKSELLERS are arms dealers and libraries are weapon stockpiles.

They loan and sell these things we call books.

Books are actually little grenades that detonate in our minds days and weeks and even years later.

You're lying in bed at 2am reading a book and kapow!Something explodes.

The words hold some revelation.Something finally makes sense or is suddenly revealed.

Sometimes I'm surprised the whole neighbourhood doesn't hear and come running in their faded pyjamas and the dogs don't go mad barking and the person next to me doesn't wake, sit up and say: "What the hell was that?"And I'd have to say casually: "Oh, just an idea."

But there's no "just" about it.

Sometimes we go through a whole day, or whole week, or whole month in the midst of people talking about Fannie Mae and silly footballers in toilets - and you start to feel empty and hungry for an authentic idea.We are starving for something truly stimulating.

Then bang, between two simple bits of hard cardboard, there it is.

Books - these friends we turn to when life turns mean, when love deserts us, when shares plummet and the debtors knock - can deliver welcome shockwaves in our minds.

I was thinking about little grenades sitting in soft spring light near the Brisbane River listening to an angular woman with wise words and 'fro hair at the Brisbane Writers Festival.

Read Kathleen Noonan's full piece at the Courier Mail online.