You see I was LIT major in college...
I say that to tell you that i LOVE BOOKS.
I have raved about my love of bookstores on here before, how they are a Tiffany's of sorts to me.
I have my favorite books,lined up on my bookshelves in places of honor, complete with covers of remembrance that every time i pick up and turn their pages fill me with glee and, dare i say- camaraderie.
There is the first hardcover book I remember getting. I was in second grade. My parents and i were at a bookstore at the Wolfchase Mall. My dad picked up the book saying it would be a nice book to get me. My mother replied "She can't read that book. It's too big for her." To which i took the book from her opened it to the first page and read it all perfectly. My parents were so impressed they bought the book for me. The book was "A Little Princess"
the pages were glossy and its book jacket (it had a book jacket!) was pink. It's pages took me to another world. A world that was beautiful and real and sad, wherein although Sara looses the things that made her "a princess" she never ceases to quit acting like one no matter what. This was my favorite book back in the day and i remember reading it over and over. The book jacket is now torn and barely hanging on. I still have it and i love it.
Another book I simply read because it was worth like 40 accelerated reader points back in the day (accelerated reader points = a personal pan pizza from pizza hut so you BETTER believe i was in on that!). I started the book for the points. I ended the book b/c it captivated me. I fell in love with the March family that winter. I felt like Jo. One of my favorite quotes still comes from the book :
"Jo's ambition was to do something very splendid. What it was, she had no idea as yet, but left it for time to tell her, and meanwhile, found her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn't read, run, and ride as much as she liked. A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic." I feel that quote describes my life all too well. I love this book so much i bought a beautiful $40.00 copy of it (back in my single days when i could spend money like that ;)
Re-reading this book a second time was even better than the first - no points necessary.Then there was that time in high school when we had to do summer reading. I picked Tolkein's The Hobbit
and allowed this book to introduce me to a little hobbit who forsook comfort in order to set out on a grand adventure. Tolkein's narration wins me over every time and i find inspiration in it each time i read the book. (three times and counting)Must i go one about my boxed set Anne of Green Gables books?!
My beautiful copy of my favorite book by one of my favorite authors F SCOTT FITZGERALD
-read this book right before i graduated college. OH Irony of ironies- This book hooked me in all of its symbolism...I could go on about
- The book is SO MUCH better than the cartoon!!!!
OR
-This is one of the three books i bought after i graduated... It inspired me to LIVE even if i didn't have it all together. The character died at the age i had just graduated. I felt a renewed sense of life after reading it, actually, one of my friends borrowed this book from me and said "i feel like I'm learning more about you by what you underlined in this book than about the guy who it is about."
Also the notes i have in my book
(my lit teacher was AWESOME when we read through it)Sigh...
Yes, i will even admit that maybe this kind of love for books is borderline... crazy. But when i look at my bookshelves i see more than just books.. i see...periods of times... lessons learned... and, yes, dare i say...friends?
(i swear to you i have REAL friends but there really is something a kin to camaraderie in the books you love)
But truth be told i am moving to Indonesia in a couple of years... Truth be told we already have three HUGE bookshelves full of books in our tiny little duplex... truth be told i cannot carry BOXES AND BOXES of books with me to Indonesia without paying a FORTUNE...
truth be told my mother bought me a
and while it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL and PRACTICAL...and I'm REALLY loving it (and THANKFUL!) it makes me (in an extreme neurotic type way) question whether my kids will even know what bookstores are in the future... if they will appreciate glossy pages and beautiful covers. If they will put a book on the shelf with a sense of completion and then take it back out to rediscover its depths/ camaraderie...
I know this may be a little too sympathetic.... but just let me, while enjoying the coolness and "practicality" of my nookcolor, mourn the absence of its pages.
