A SHAMEFUL REVELATION by Eleanor Updale

Interesting, but uncomfortable

I've developed an eye problem that makes reading difficult, and it's set me off wondering about the mechanics of handling books.  As I labour to make out words which look to me (and me alone) as if they have been produced on a printer running low on ink, I can’t help but admire the generations who slaved over early texts in dimly-lit libraries, devoured Dickens by candlelight, or even coped with early postwar paperbacks in the glow of a 40 watt bulb.

Reading is not just an ocular occupation, though.  It takes a lot of muscular co ordination in the hands, arms, back and neck. It requires a reasonable ability to balance. Am I the only person who has reached an advanced age without finding a really comfortable way of reading in bed?

One way of doing it

and another

Reading on a high-speed train is hard enough, but can you imagine succeeding in an unlit horse-drawn carriage, bumping across ruts in the road?  And What must it have been like for eighteenth and nineteenth century ladies, perched on hard settees with closely-printed books?


How did they do it?


 Perhaps I should risk a confession here.  I have never dared say this before - and for an author it may be a fatal revelation - but what the heck. Here it is:
Though I have always loved stories and research, and adore books and manuscripts as objects, even when my eyes were working properly, I never much liked reading as a physical occupation. For me, it has always been a rather uncomfortable means to an end.
When children tell me they don't like reading, I encourage then to persevere, and wax lyrical about how books will open doors for them (which is true) but secretly I sympathise.  I have never cracked how and where to sit. Does anyone else find some books just difficult to hold? No wonder the gentlemen's clubs of yesteryear commissioned all sorts of reading stands to attach to those wonderful winged armchairs. a friend of mine reads in the bath.  I'm too shy to ask to see how she does it.  my books just get wet.

It's not just the fatal mix of fat books and small hands. These days paper-saving narrow margins and tight gutters can make it a struggle to catch the beginnings and ends of lines. Bindings can be too tight, or too cheap and weak.  A couple of months ago I was sent a brand new book by an author I was to interview at a festival.  As soon as I opened it, all the pages fell onto the floor.  A few days later, I was looking at a 300 year-old text almost as tightly sewn and robust as the day it was bound.

St  Jerome doesn't seem to be having much fun

Alas, I may be reading less in future. It's simply not much fun any more. But I'm lucky to have my eye trouble now.  There have never been more electronic and mechanical aids to reading (and writing), not to mention the glory of audiobooks (and here I must recommend Dan Stevens' wonderful reading of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, by History Girl Louisa Young ). Even if my sight doesn't improve, thanks to modern science it will be a while before I can't read at all, and that may never happen. In the meantime, does anyone out there know of studies of how people read in the past: of where and how they sat, how/whether they held or balanced their books, of reading machines, and so on?  Did anyone grumble about the sheer physical awkwardness of reading?  Or is it just me? I would love to know.

www.eleanorupdale.comwww.eleanorupdale.com

pictures from Wikimedia Commons

Tweet