The First of Many Productive Days
Yesterday, I organized and gathered every one of my books from my mother’s house, piled them high, and prepped them for sorting. What goes? and What stays? When I pulled a number of childhood books I had saved, I was shocked by their pristine condition. Then I remembered that, once upon a time, I opened books only wide enough to just make out the words brushing the center margins. Knowing that I no longer had such easy restraint, I felt a vague remorse that, in my nostalgia, I would erase the evidence of a childhood quirk.
Perhaps there are two types of bibliophiles: the neurotically protective and the warmly affectionate. Both share an intense passion for reading and books. Not just the stories and characters and transportive glory, but the physical books themselves. These are the people who flick anxious glances at the Nook station in their local Barnes & Noble, wary of or outright hostile toward the increasing popularity of ebooks. The ones who raise their eyebrows in surprise (and perhaps mild dismay) when they discuss a novel with someone, only to discover that said someone listened to it on their iPod. “Oh.” Perhaps this is why I’ve only just started downloading books onto my iPad after a mere three months of proud ownership.
The protective reader treats her books with a formal reverence. She believes them deserving of respect, and accordingly, handles them gently. She lends books with great reluctance and dire warnings about the tortures that befall those who crinkle book jackets. Even watching someone deliberately break in the spine of their own new book makes her cringe and look away. It’s like being forced to watch a ritualistic mutilation. I used to be the kind of person who guarded her books with care, as if they were pets vulnerable to an unidentifiable cruelty. If I let the corner of a book sit in water, I despaired and mentally flogged myself for such negligence.
The less hysterical book lover cherishes her books as a child cherishes a well-loved teddy bear. She carries them around everywhere, reading for a time then lazily tossing them aside. As I grew older, I wandered to the latter group. I suppose it had something to do with taking courses that required me to write in margins and annotate passages. As I discovered new academic interests and an appreciation for non-fiction, the line between books read for school and books read for pleasure became less and less distinct. Careless affection for linguistics books bled into my treatment of high fantasy novels, until suddenly I found myself throwing JRR Tolkien onto the passenger seat - not at all mindful of where and how he landed - and leaving Oscar Wilde by the kitchen sink. And now, as I return home to sort and organize numerous relics of a past life, I look around the house and find books strewn casually about in every room. Piled high on the dresser, sitting patiently on the coffee table, resting silently on the nightstand. To this day, I sleep with books still on my bed, too lazy to be bothered with moving them.
I guess I can take away one small comfort. The water thing still bothers me. Even when the pages dry, they never look the same. They just sit there swollen, lumpily reminding you of your failure.
