Follow Friday - The Current Congress Is the 113th Congress

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Tsuki's Books and Rotten Apple Books.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Share your favorite literary quote!

As usual, I'm going to cheat a little bit and pick two quotes rather than one. First, I'm picking my favorite literary quote from one of my favorite historical figures:

I cannot live without books - Thomas Jefferson
This is how it is usually rendered, but it is incomplete. The quote is part of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to his political opponent and long time friend John Adams. In his letter, Jefferson continues the sentence, adding, "but fewer will suffice when amusement, and not use, is the only future object." Jefferson understood that books are essential to life, but that what made them essential was that they be used, and learned from.

My second quote is from Erasmus. I am not going to use the quote that is oft attributed to Erasmus of "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." I am not using that quote because it is actually a misquote, and not at all what Erasmus really said. In the line that has become popularly paraphrased as that, Erasmus makes clear that he is speaking about a specific set of books by Greek authors, and that his preference for books over clothing is merely a one-time choice relating to a particular delivery of money. But the Erasmus quote I am using is this:

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults. - Erasmus

Erasmus' quote expresses much the same sentiment as Jefferson's. A book lover expresses their love for books by reading them, thumbing through them, writing annotations in the margins, using them, and learning from them. The mark of a true book lover is not a set of pristine books sitting on a shelf, looking beautiful and ornamental. No, the mark of a true book lover is piles of worn out books stacked all over the house.

Go to previous Follow Friday: The Atomic Number of Copernicum is 112

Go to subsequent Follow Friday: Cadmium-114 Has a Half-Life of 14.1 Years

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