To be honest, i didn’t know what to think of the whole friends with an old book excercise at first. The book I was assigned to is called Dichiarazioni della Pianta dell’antiche Siracuse, e d’alcune scelte Medaglie d’esse e de’ Principi che quelle possedettero and was written by Vincenzo Mirabella e Alagona. That was already a great fit, a book in italian for a guy that is from Italy but doesn’t speak the language.
I was not happy with the book and the friendship seemed very forced. I did not want a friend that i am not able to understand at all. I’m not sure if the book even wanted to be friends with me, because it never made the slightest effort to help me understand what it was saying.
I would say the climax of our friendship, if that is what we want to call it, was when we finally met in person. Not having to look into a screen if i wanted to talk to the book was very beneficial for our friendship. The book really opened up to me about itself. It tried it’s best to tell me everything i wanted to know and learn about it. As much as i despised the book from seeing it on the internet, it was beautiful on the inside. There were a lot of great pictures and beautifully written texts, which i still did not understand.
The visit to the library in Einsiedeln really showed me, that my friend was actually nicer than he seemed before. I really started to like the excercise more, now that i met my friend in person. I was happy when i walked out of the library and was looking forward to the next task.
Sadly, we neglected our friendship for quite some time. We tried to pick up where we left off at the library but it was never really the same again. The third task was harder because the book suddenly did not want me to know more information about it. I gave my best to keep the friendship going in the right direction, but he seemed to have other plans.
With the fourth task, i made an effort to turn our friendship around. I tried to make it as easy as possible for my friend, to reenter my life. I tried sweet talking him into helping me with the text file, because it was quite impossible to understand what he had written inside of him.
I was disappointed once again and came to the conclusion that this friendship just simply could not work out. It was forced and one sided. I am sure that Dichiarazioni della Pianta dell’antiche Siracuse, e d’alcune scelte Medaglie d’esse e de’ Principi che quelle possedettero will make great friends in the future but we were not a great match.
I think that the excercise can be very interesting but not with every book. Some of them were definitely easier to understand and to work with han others. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the experience.