books.

i grew up reading.  i remember being six years old and bored, pestering my mother about what i could do.  she took me into the living room, pulled a bobbsey twins novel off the bookshelf, and suggested i read.  so i did.  and i never looked back.

the living room in our house was a treasure trove of books.  novels, poetry, short stories, encyclopedias, dictionaries, art books, books on how things worked, volumes of fiction for children.  you think of a kind of book, and you could probably find it in there.  i thought it was normal to have a full wall of books in a room, to have books in every room of the house.  i didn't realize that some people relegate the few books they have to the closet or only buy books as decorating pieces.  for me, books were a way of living lives i couldn't otherwise access.

and now--now i'm a bit of a book whore, to borrow a phrase from an old professor.  i love just about any kind of book.  fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose, biographies, essays, history.  i love the feel of a book--the heft of its weight in my hand.  i love the smell of books that you only find in a space filled to the brim with texts.  and i love the look of books on a shelf; there was one particular aisle in the BYU library that i especially loved because most of the spines were red.

but most of all, i love losing myself in a book.  which makes my current task more pleasure than task, since it requires reading and reading and then reading some more (in preparation for my exams).  last week, it was a text about relationships between women, don quixote, and community.  this week, it is the origins of the novel and a novel in verse.  and next week will bring more.  this is a life i could get used to.


{photo by john }