John Adams & the Eternal Love of Books

In Adams’ time, there was only one way to be a reader. Paper books were an investment.

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My topic for February was the poet Emily Dickinson. Earlier this month, I finished Lyndall Gordan’s biography of the Dickinson family, Lives Like Loaded Guns, and wrote a review for it, which you can find here.

It was a challenge to summarize the soaring family drama in less than two thousand words. By the end, I understood why Emily’s poems often hit like blows to an adversary—many actually were.

My search for Emily Dickinson has not ended. I still have to read the book My Wars are Laid Away in Books by Isaiah Habegger; it seems more focused on the poet herself. I’ll start it in the next few weeks, and my posts about her will continue.

Hopefully, by the time I finish, I’ll have a better understanding of Emily Dickinson, particularly mysteries such as her illness. While it was likely epilepsy, no one knows for certain.

I sought a palate cleanser for the rest of the month. The chosen book for that was David McCullough’s book John Adams. It’s one of many tomes that have been sitting on my shelf, waiting for attention.

Last year I read a couple of books about George Washington; I even published a post about his mother, Mary Ball Washington, which you can find here.

Our country was built by courageous people who knew what they were sacrificing: comfort, friendships, even their lives. They put these things on the line to pursue what every human craves, freedom.

In history class, we do not tend to learn the small details that make the Founding Fathers and their families human. That’s why, when I find something written by them that could have come from my pen, it’s exciting.

It did not take long to find one of those passages in John Adams, when McCullough quotes from his writing:

I want to see my wife and children every day. I want to see my grass and blossoms and corn….But above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books.

Any book lover will understand why I found this passage delightful. The love of books and thirst for knowledge has always existed. Certainly, things look different now; many of us read on a Kindle, rather than buying paper copies. Still others enjoy audiobooks.