Ionut's books

"First of all, I know this it's far too affected to name these three books a "library," but that's what they are for me. Poor them, they don't even have a place of their own yet.

I relocated from Romania to the UK three months ago and unfortunately books aren't among the things you can bring with you in such an exodus. However, in accord with the radical change of scenery, language included, I have decided to start a new library from scratch. I too am devoted to that catchphrase that the library is the window to a person, and it is a wonderful and exhilarating feeling to start a new library in a new place.

For the moment, it contains just a Romanian-English dictionary, the only book I had brought with me from Romania, and which I sometimes beg to no avail to show me some light in this bizarre language of yours; then Richard Wilhelm's I Ching, which I constantly study; and The Waste Books of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. The other two, Genghis Khan by John Man and Tropic of Capricorn by Simon Reeve are some "easy non-fiction" from the local library, and which is my version of escapist literature in the afternoon or evening, after strenuous mental activity in the morning.

It will be a pleasure to watch this new library grow, with impulsive additions as well as some necessary, well calculated "adornments" (meaning those books I will not read with urgency, but which have to be there) and everything fitting in like pieces of a puzzle, creating in time some kind of mirror in which I can look and always see my true self. Next on the list is a beautifully illustrated edition of H. C. Andersen, who will always be one of my favorite writers; van Gogh's letters; and some Borges."

---Ionut