When I first learned that I would have to “become friends” with an old book I was quite sceptical about the task. I thought to myself: “how on earth do I do that?”. I couldn’t imagine how it would be possible for me to not only learn about its content, but actually become friends with this book.
Up until task two, I honestly wasn’t excited about the idea of getting to know my book. It was hard to find any information on my book for task one and the fact that it was written in Latin discouraged me, since I hardly understood anything.
To my own surprise my opinion on the task changed when I actually got to meet my book in person for task two. Even though I didn’t understand what was written on the pages, it was a surprisingly interesting experience to hold a book in my hands which is over 500 years old. Sadly there weren’t any illustrations in my book, but since it is a lexicon it wasn’t too difficult to understand its purpose and while looking at the pages I began to understand a few words from time to time or was able to guess what they might mean.
Looking back on all tasks, number two was by far the most exciting and fascinating one. But also to now be able to see how all of our books connect which each other is very interesting.
What I learned from my book was literally to not judge a book by it’s cover. When I first learned about our task of becoming friends with an old book I was not excited about it at all. I asked myself “what’s the purpose of trying to become friends with a book which I can’t even understand?”. But in the process, I learned that really getting to know a book doesn’t mean to simply read it and to understand its content, but also to learn about its history, the composition and organization of images and text and how the book looks and feels.
In conclusion I have to say that my book and I had a rough start and it took me some time to actually build a friendship with it, but in the end I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet this special friend.