Saturday, February 26, 2011

Books

“Books! People never really stop loving books. By now you've got vids, instant uplinks (etc), but you need the smell, Donna. The smell of books!” ~ Doctor Who, Silence in the Library

It's true, people never do stop loving books.

Sure, I know the English language is changing around our ears and the literary world is morphing into fodder for the visual and audio world. Lazy peoples. But there will always be someone with a library filled with dusky old tomes of long forgotten histories, often read romances with torn and bent pages, pictures books with scribbles in them, historical relics – trophies of long ago. Books!

I love libraries, something about the silence and the peace, the books stacked next to each other on and on and on for shelves and shelves! The high ceilings and the, hopefully, comfortable chairs. The lighting, the books. One of my favorite Doctor Who episodes takes place entirely in a library, the biggest library in the universe, considering it's a whole world.

I would much rather prefer to read a good book than watch a good movie. We-ell, depends on the movie and how many times I've seen it before. One of my favorite things about books is how you can curl up in a corner and turn the light out and clutch a flashlight in one hand and just read the book, hunched over it, eager to learn what secrets that book may contain.

I love how words fit together to form sentences. Sentences into paragraphs. Paragraphs into stories. My stories, well, I don't think I would be a writer if it weren't for a specific people, my brothers, first and foremost. My older brother who's closest in age to me, mostly. My mom's going to think that's strange, but it really is the truth. He's the one who encouraged that creativity. But it was my oldest brother who gave me the love books, the love of reading, the love of knowledge. He's the one who would recommend something for my younger brother, I'd gobble it up and absolutely love it.

The interesting thing was, I used to absolutely despise reading. I completely and totally hated it. It hurt my eyes, it hurt my head, it made my ears ring and my toes curl. Now, oh, I love my books.

On my Bible, which is like, 25 years old or something, there's a little stain on the bottom corner of the pages. You know the stains that form when the book is closed and then when you open the book, you can cut the stains in half or whatever? Well, anyway, that stain is my stain and it looks like a duck. Bob insists that the stain is called Donald, but no, the stain is just the Duck. I love my stain, just like I love my books.

I once blindfolded myself and started pulling random books from my shelf, just to see if I could tell which book was which by its size and shape. The Anne of Green Gables books were a little hard to tell apart, but I got all the Orson S. Card books. And I know exactly how my copy of the The Westing Game feels. It's so small and it's been twisted between the hands so many times that the binding is bent just enough to give it an permanent curve to it.

Books.

Books.

Books.

Ahhhhhhh...

1 comment:

  1. OH MY GOSH THIS WAS GOING TO BE MY NEXT BLOG POST GRRRRR

    <.<


    Not only that but I just read Fahrenheit 451.


    >.<



    (-siigh- this post sounds exactly like me... except I never used to hate books...)

    ReplyDelete