Scattered about on my bookshelves are a couple of atlases, four volumes of quotations, six poetry anthologies, collections of esoteric subjects ranging from newspaper obituaries to a non-encyclopedia, and stray compendiums like “The Columbian Orator” and a two-volume set of Civil War military correspondence.
These are books I generally dip into for two reasons: pleasure or inspiration. Sometimes, when I have a few spare moments or find myself in search of some diversion, I’ll open a dipper book for some instant entertainment. In addition, if I need bucking up or am at a bit of a loss as to what to write next, I’ll open some hefty package of print like “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” and strike on some spark of inspiration.
Back Road Adventures
You’re zipping down the highway at 75 mph, crest a hill, and find yourself approaching a horrendous traffic jam. You have just enough time to whip off at the exit and take a secondary road paralleling the expressway. You follow the road and your GPS, and now, instead of passing through a bland countryside of billboards and warehouses, you’re in a different country altogether, a route taking you through small towns and farm land, past historic markers, country stores, and Mom n’ Pop restaurants. Your blood pressure drops back to normal at this slower speed, and the detour soon causes your irritation to give way to enjoyment.Looking up information online versus exploring a dipper book offers this same contrast.
When we need some specific information, most of us hop on the internet highway, which makes sense. Here the attorney can quickly locate some arcane point of law, the cook a recipe for Colcannon Potatoes, the student a thumbnail biography of Lord Nelson. But every once in a while, if we exchange that online freeway for an excursion into a dipper book, we can suddenly find ourselves encountering treasures that would have escaped our attention on a digital drive.
A Playground for the Mind
On the long, hot Carolina afternoons of my boyhood, I would sit in the den and read at random from the World Book Encyclopedia my parents had purchased. In the fall, the Sears catalog would arrive, and again I passed time browsing its hundreds of pages, looking not just at possible Christmas gifts but at everything else as well.Today, when my grandchildren visit, some of them will entertain themselves with Calvin and Hobbes, with the two Norman Rockwell albums my wife bought many years ago, or with such books as “The Best of Reader’s Digest” and John MacDonald’s “Great Battles of World War II.” One 6-year-old grandson, clearly a budding bibliophile, will spend many minutes on the floor by picture books of art and history.
Sightseeing
Here’s a specific example of the way a dipper book works.Suppose you or one of the kids want to identify the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. You put the term into the search engine on your laptop or phone, and several lists describing these manmade structures immediately pop up.
Whether we’re looking in Bartlett’s for a Churchill quote, in a National Geographic atlas for the countries bordering Hungary, or in “The Best Loved Poems of the American People” for Edgar Guest’s “Home,” odds are that you’ll run across several tangential subjects that may catch your eye and give you pause for amusement or learning.
No one, least of all me, wants a return to a time when there was no digital highway, when seeking information of almost any kind meant research in a library, phone calls or snail-mail letters, or ordering a book on the topic. When we want information fast and efficiently, the internet simply can’t be beat. It literally brings a world of knowledge into our homes.
But if we want to leave that highway and roam some backroads, dipper books are the way to go. Instead of a straight shot to a destination, we mosey along, enjoying the sights and taking pleasure in what each new turn in the road brings to us.