Book, Books, Books
I love books. Every writer loves books. We covet them, horde them, pile them in corners when the bookshelves are full. My husband threatens all manner of dire consequences when I bring home more books. His blusters do have a point: we live on a boat. Unlike other horders who live on land, my love of books could eventually sink us. So I pause as I lovingly finger the spine of yet another passageway to adventure. I don’t buy that book, even though I want to read it. Instead, I go to the library.
I love libraries. There is no place in the entire world—a seat next to Colin Firth at a dinner party included—that can make me happier. I love the smell, the hush, the way you can get lost for hours and find treasures buried so deep you feel like you are the first one to discover them. Then you find a train ticket stub, or a scrap of a grocery list or a smudged fingerprint that tells you someone else has found this treasure before. I think it’s completely appropriate that libraries are quiet. For me, they have a cathedral-like quality; they are hallowed, sacred temples to books.
My cousin works in a library. When she and her associates read my post about how boring I think my life is, she says they all laughed. But what they don’t realize is that I think they have exciting lives. All day long, they get to work with books—ones that are already written, edited, revised, printed and waiting to be read. I don’t know how they get any work done. I would constantly scold patrons: “Go away. Can’t you see I’m reading?” Surrounded by new books every day, old books that I loved when I was four, fourteen or forty, I would be a hopeless librarian. But I’d be a happy one.
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