Fully Booked

As though in some kind of spiritual communion with Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi, Noemi Zarb opens her article in Saturday’s paper the metonymic theme, ironically enough, of judging books by their cover:

"Show me the books you have at home and I'll tell you all about your personality!"

To her credit, the impudence of the boast is a couple of notches lower in arrogance than Cauchi’s dogmatic creed, which he barks at the reader without a by-your-leave.

"Tell me what you read, and I tell you what you are."

Yet, how rich is the irony of the amount of whimsical tripe that will be churned out by the bucket load for this godforsaken UNESCO day of the book that everybody seems so excited about. Zarb’s contribution is a vomit-inducing flight of fairy dust whimsy that doesn’t fail, as is customary in this sort of article, to patronise, insult and irritate almost anybody who has ever deemed to pick up a book and read it.
As is also habitual in this variety of giddy literary appreciation, no concession is made for level-headed reasoning. Keen to assume a virtually Apollonic status of wisdom, no book can ever be dismissed by Zarb:

“Each and every [book is] intoxicating in [its] own special way.”

There should be a more eloquent way of putting this but, what absolute rubbish. Unless she has found some method of distilling the pages of Paulo Coelho into a low-grade variant of moonshine, she would have to do better than her twee childhood reminiscences to support that grand claim. Of course, given that Zarb’s writing suggests that she might be exactly the sort cotton-brained sap that goes weak at the knees at the very sound of the name Coelho, or some other such pseudo-profound Latinate crud, it is not to be excluded that she actually believes her own premise.
Like her bishoply precursor, Zarb eventually comes around to the sermon portion of her lesson. J.K. Rowling will doubtless be delighted, therefore, to hear that Zarb thinks that all the illiterate children of Malta need to turn into charismatic bookworms like herself is to read more “gripping fantasy”, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel. Next thing you know, this skittish gomeril will probably be wanting to send boys to school in flowery bonnets:

“If you want children to keep on turning the page to see what happens next, then the pulse must start racing as admiration and loathing tingle the blood.”

This quaint image of children’s reading proclivities is so farcically Victorian that it tips two-footedly into fantasy itself.
So kids, hasn’t this been a great week for reading (and writing)? You’ve had the words of a Tweedledum look-alike, Nikol Cauchi, and now the candy-floss blithering of an escapee from a Don Bluth film. If that doesn’t stop you reading, nothing will.