I made the most beautiful trips of my childhood with the book bus. The green-grey monster parked in the schoolyard in Freiburg-Littenweiler every Wednesday afternoon. Those who got on had an unlimited choice: a ticket to the Middle Ages, to the Urmel on the South Sea island of Titiwu or one-way to Lönneberga. I managed two to three trips with ease. Every week.
This reading speed is passé. On the one hand, because my children hired me as a reader: If you haven’t mastered the ABC yet, you need a tour guide for Titiwu and Lönneberga. On the other hand, because I earn my money with writing, not with reading. When I have time, for example on summer vacation, I carefully select my travel companions. Not according to whether they have won prizes or whether a few gentlemen celebrate them as a discovery in the feature pages. But if they have something to say to me.
Some literary critics claim that there is such a thing as a good book and a bad book. This is a fallacy and about as enlightening as saying there are good people and bad people. Of course, I like a cleverly told story in refreshing language better than an accumulation of clichés. But that says little about whether a book will win my heart. In my opinion, the magic of reading only occurs where a book and a person who understand each other meet. Where someone unlocks a world of thoughts.
I’m sure no two readers read exactly the same book. Because everyone conquers this unknown country in their own way, equipping it with their own inner images. Anyone who doesn’t believe that just has to read reviews on the website of a large online bookseller: The same story that ties one person to the sofa for two days is classified by another as a case for waste paper. Sometimes this leads to bitter and pointless discussions. Nobody is right.
It’s the same in love: a guy might have a surfer’s body and a quantum physicist’s brain and still not be the right one. Because maybe he’s rather small and bald and dropped out of physics in the 11th grade, but he can ask questions at the right moment and hug at the right moment and also cooks an excellent Thai curry.
Speaking of Thai curry: Just as I don’t want to eat the same thing every day, I don’t always want to bite my way through the same type of book ham. Some lyrics are like whole wheat bread: densely packed so I have to chew thoroughly, and so nutritious that two pages can last me an entire evening. Others can be nibbled away like light, fluffy baguette slices. Delicious? Both! And then I know some whose taste changes over the years, like expensive red wine. Books that make me travel to other places again and again. One of each type goes in my holiday luggage.
I then enjoy it in the lounge chair. And if the children really want to go to Lönneberga? Well, then you’ll just have to take Papa with you.
