Why vade mecum indeed!
It starts with my partner in crime. I said one day that I wanted to finally start that book blog we’d talked about forever, especially since my reading habit has hit a book a day, and I asked her: Now what do we call it? “Vade mecum,” she said.
Vade mecum conjures up, for me, a little pocket reference. Old fashioned and bound in leather (or your substitute of choice), a little yellowed with age and battered around the edges, extremely useful and sometimes well loved. It’s a pleasant image, especially for a book lover, but I wasn’t sure it entirely <em>fit</em>. That is, until I dug down on it a little.
This takes us on a delightful little etymological trip. (I can’t be the only one delighted by etymology, right? And also entomology, but that’s a different blog entirely.) Vade mecum comes from Latin: ‘vade’ is ‘go’ (in the imperative) and ‘mecum’ is with me. It literally translates as ‘go with me!” Now that speaks to me, because that’s not just an important reference anymore, it’s everything we do.
Go with me! Take us with you. Keep us in your head. Put us on your phone or your tablet and slip us in your pocket wherever you go. Go with me! Join us for our love of storytelling and the written word. Come for a walk inside our heads. Go with me! Let each book take you on its own journey, as they always have.
Vade mecum. It’s exactly right.
Also, it makes us feel fancy.