Books

Cicero famously said: 'A home without books is like a body without a soul.'

When we enter any home, it is the presence (or absence) of books on shelves, on tables or simply piled on the floor that talks to us first. When there are lots of books, we are aware of the many ideas and voices competing for space, and it is this that makes the home interesting, but, when there are no books, the home becomes dull and unexciting.


   
Nowadays, the trend is to read e-books on small electronic tablets, and, for many people, physical books have already been labelled 'yesterday'. The converts elaborate about convenience, space-saving and the ease of reading, amazing over the number of books that can be stored on these devices.  However, an electronic tablet will always remain just that, no matter how many books it might happen to contain. And when there is only an electronic tablet and no physical books, the home becomes, as Cicero so aptly put it, 'a body without a soul'.