I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasnt allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just werent noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motors steady thrum and tickle vibrated below ones sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence.
