Love of Books

I love books...

[Photo By:ginnerobot]

 I love reading them, looking at them, but most of all I love sharing them with friends. I could spend hours in a library or a book shop. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast simply for the scene in the book shop with the rolling ladders and the part where Beast shows Belle the library in the castle. As a kid, I always had at least 3 books I was reading at a time and would check out dozens of books every summer. Now as a college student, I have a job in the research department of the library and I get to hang out with books all the time.

When I'm not busy at work I will often go through the shelves and pull books out that look interesting. Through this I've discovered so many wonderful books that often sit on the shelves forgotten. In fact I found one the other day that had never been opened! It's binding had never been broken even though its pages were yellowing. Sometimes I find one that I know a friend would love but would never find on their own. I then take it upon myself to be the book matchmaker and introduce them to one another. It makes me so happy to see them sit down with it and flip through it, with their homework neglected beside them.

The old books are my favorite. They are not computer printed cardboard like all the new ones. Instead they have cloth covers with gold ink letter imprinted on them. They are the ones with the most character and have such beautiful covers even though their edges are fraying and the binding makes a crackling sound as you open it because the hardened glue is coming loose. When you look in the back cover there is the old catalog card in the back that says all the due dates for check out. Some of them haven't been checked out in years and their most recent stamp says "Due Jan 23, 1974".

Books hold history beyond their content. The Librarian's stamps, the cover, the penciled notes in the margins,  the old bookmarks that were left in by mistake, even the crumbs in the binding from someone's late night study snack from 40 years ago, all tell a story. This is why I love books, especially library books. Sometimes I get so distracted thinking about where the book has been and who else has read it that I never actually get around to reading it...oh how wonderful life is with books...

Cheers!

After re-reading this I've realized that I need to own a bookshop. I don't think that I could be a librarian because then I would be stuck inside all the time, but a bookshop I could do. At the very least I need to have a space for a library in my house.