It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.

And he lay on the cold floor of the study watching the wind stirring the pages, mixing the written and unwritten, the end among them.

On the thought a blessed silence came, an empty clarity. He took it a first for utter desolation, but desolation was a type of free fall, perpetual and without ground below. This was stillness: balanced, solid, weirdly serene. No momentum to it at all, forward or backwards or sideways.

He lay drained of tension, not moving, and content to be so. The oddly stretched moment was like a bite of eternity, eaten on the run. Was this quiet place inside something new-grown, or had he just never stumbled upon it before? How could so vast a thing lay undiscovered for so long? His breathing slowed and deepened.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.

Having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read.

Though he would sometimes not touch a book for a week, he generally spent part of each day in reading…if he sat in the library an hour, he would have half a dozen volumes around him, on the table, on chairs and on the floor. He seemed to read a few pages here and a few pages there, and pass from place to place, from volume to volume…sometimes (though very rarely) he would get sufficiently interested in a volume to read it all.

I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

And once more given to inaction,
Empty in spirit and alone,
He settled down – to the distraction
Of making other minds his own;
Collecting books, he stacked a shelfful,
Read, read, not even one was helpful:
Here, there was dullness, there pretence;
This one lacked conscience, that one sense;
All were by different shackles fettered;
And, past times having lost their hold,
The new still raved about the old.
Like women, books he now deserted,
And mourning taffeta he drew
Across the bookshelf’s dusty crew.

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

انْكَبَّ على القراءة بسرعة وشراهة وأعصاب متوترة فلم يتمتع بقراءة مجدية ولا نافعة، وأصابه سوء هضم عقلي، فكان يعرف أشياء وأشياء ولكنه لم يتقن شيئًا أبدًا، ولم يتعود عقله التفكير مطلقًا ولكن كانت الكتب تفكر له وتتأمل بدلا منه. ولم يكن يعنيه التفكير ولا التأمل وإنما كان همه الحقيقي أن يحدث الغد بما قرأ بالأمس، وأن يحاضر الزملاء من الموظفين والصحاب -بلهجة الفيلسوف المعلم- فيما وعته الذاكرة وحفظته

And by and by Christopher Robin came to the end of things, and he was silent, and he sat there, looking out over the world, just wishing it wouldn't stop.

he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.