Books, books, books

Hello, my name is Annette and I’m a bookoholic.

If this condition actually has a support group or a twelve step program, I’m going to make sure I stay far away from it. This is one addiction I don’t want to get rid of. I love books. I like the way a well-bound book looks. I love the way it feels in my hands. I like paper-backs because they’re convenient (but given the choice I’ll always pick a hardcover version). I like the smell of old books, musty and I like the smell of a new book, fresh paper. I love the sound of a page being turned. And above all else I love the contents of books. Words, so small, yet so powerful. Nothing else can transport me to another place and time the way words can. When I was a kid I’d disappear into books for hours, unable to hear people around me until someone actually touched me to get my attention. The books I loved then shaped the way I view the world, and they still do. Great writers have great power… at least over me.

I’m physically unable to enter a book store without buying at least one book. It has been suggested in the past that I should use the library instead, at least that way I wouldn’t have piles of books all over my apartment and boxes of them in storage, but I like owning what I read. I like having a stock of books I haven’t read yet, so that I never run out of books. Some day I hope I’ll have a big house with book shelves everywhere to house them all. If I ever win the lottery and don’t have to work for a living anymore I’ll open a bookstore with big comfy chairs and free warm drinks. A place where people can come and enjoy the books for hours if they want. A store in which I could spend my time reading and selling books to people I like. Needless to say the store would most likely never make any money, but I think I’d be very happy.

On a TV-show once, I heard someone describe the book « Of human bondage » as their security blanket, and I immediately knew how he felt. Not that that book in particular has any significance to me, I even have to admit I’ve never read it, but I recognize the feeling. Picking up one of my favourite books to re-read it feels comforting, safe, like coming home. Personally I don’t have one book in particular that performs this, frankly, vital function. I have a lot of “security blankets”, ever changing, and varying with my mood. “The little Prince” when I need to remember what it felt like to be a child. “Naiv Super” when I feel a small existential crisis coming on. A John Irving novel when I want to get lost in a good story. For some reason I read John Grisham when I’m flying somewhere, don’t know why, it just feels right. (And his books aren’t even favourites of mine…)

There are books I have shared with people. A French comic novel about an outhouse with a group of friends, taking turns reading out loud on a lazy afternoon in the late spring. Poetry in bed with a former boyfriend. Political satire with a friend who ended up changing his vote. Reading my favourite children’s books to my cousins, and now my little sister. Countless memories revolving around books.

Every day, I find myself in awe of one writer or another. Whenever I read a perfect sentence I desperately wish I had written. I write knowing that the likelihood of my ever writing something I feel is good enough to be submitted to a publisher, is minimal. I write because I love it, because it helps me make sense of things occasionally and I write because some day I may stumble upon a single sentence that is near perfection. Until that day I’m happy reading other people’s perfect or near-perfect sentences.


(Originally posted on the other blog Nov 19th, 2005. I'll be reposting some of the entries from the previous blog. Maybe all of them, haven't decided yet.)