Books

Dear friends of piano music,

I know that you shouldn't do that - divide people into categories. But I think a differentiating dichotomy is at least worth considering. I found it at Donna Leon's Comissario Brunetti, whom I find absolutely adorable. If you happen to have the opportunity to see the German film adaptations of Donna Leon's novel - no, that's not the comissario I'm talking about, because I don't mean this figure strolling through advertising brochure-like backdrops, he has almost nothing in common with the original . Guido Brunetti is an ancient historian and philosopher disguised as a commissioner, he discusses literary theory with his wife, and when he's not walking through Venice trying to understand and solve crimes he is reading Sophocle and Tacitus. I find his division of people into readers and non-readers remarkable. Now one has to admit, however, that access to the written word is not distributed particularly fairly in this world. Even my mother had only a single book as a child, but at least she had an opportunity to learn to read. Anyone who reads, or should we better say who a potential reader is, that is, who would read if he was allowed to, is simply curious. He or she wants to experience new things, understand connections, get to the bottom of things. Discover worlds that would otherwise have remained closed to him or her. I still remember how I read Plato during my studies, about the death of Socrates, the tears ran down my face because it is so shocking how Socrates turns down the possibility of escape in order to fulfill the will of the community that had decided his death democratically. "Educational experiences" do not differ that much from what you actually experience, rather one overlaps with the other and thus shapes our personality. A life without books would be terribly boring, I think, because without the suggestions from the books the world would be more colorless, one-dimensional. Only a trained mind makes the world really interesting, or, as I once read aptly somewhere: "Warning! Reading endangers your stupidity!" I hesitated for a moment to write this sentence because it could hurt someone. But no, if you have really read this whole text, then of course you fall under the category "reader" .......

Kerstin