Between the Bookworm and the Bibliophile

Identity Conflict Among Readers

- Gurmeet Brar

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." It is with these words that Francis Bacon, he wrote more than four hundred years ago, described the diversities in how we interact with books.

His observation is also very timely today. It is an ideal point of departure to see the identity crisis that is continuing among the readers the tensions between the bookworm that digests content and the bibliophile that worships the book as an object. In between them is a sizeable and somewhat lost crowd that reads lustily but collects much more than it can consume.

The bookworm represents the thoughts of Bacon of books to be swallowed or even chewed and digested. This reader reads books everywhere, on trains, in waiting rooms, during power failures or on the wedding when the speech is interminable. To them, the book is more of an idea and story conveyer. The physical appearance does not count much: a dog-eared paperback with tea-stains is just as valuable as a fresh edition. The bookworm reads in a hungry fashion, and he tends to change his reading much too fast, either to swallow up whole novels, or to patiently digest deep ones. They are concerned with what is accomplished and what is learned.