The Book Whore

Bee Gees Song of the Day: Surrender

This is my life story, I've been lost and found
In the final hour, turn my life around

And I surrender. take me for all time
Love as warm as wine, and I surrender

I’d been emailing a good friend this weekend and among the many things we discussed, we talked briefly about bookstores.

I may have told you before that I am a book whore. I love books. I love to read them and I love to own them. I’ll wear a ratty old corduroy jacket until my friends make fun of me and my kids take it and burn it without my knowledge, but if there is one thing I will buy; it's books. I like to go to the library book sales and buy lots of books for $10. It makes me ridiculously happy. A Barnes and Noble a few miles away sounds like nirvana; I can spend hours there smelling books and reading books and loving books. I don’t know if that’s part of my geek-y nature, but there you go.

The book whore in me has this fantasy of a library in her house with shelves up to the ceiling filled with books she has read or wants to read or thinks she should read or that she has collected. In a special little place in this room is a first edition "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. The book whore sneaks into the room sometimes just to look at the book. She would never touch it because it cost upwards of $210,000. She also has a book written by Agatha Christie signed by the author and one by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, similarly annotated.

The book whore next moves over to the shelf with a set of 10 Colliers Childrens' Books. These are on the bottom shelf so that she has to sit on the floor to reach them. She likes to pull those off and look at those occasionally. When she was three years old, she taught herself to read these books. She would hide in a corner of a room upstairs, losing herself in the words and pictures. And if she couldn’t see anyone, no one could see her. No one would bother her. The world disappeared behind pictures of teddy bears skipping, children sleeping, five Chinese brothers smiling, Scottish Terriers named Angus chasing cats, scary witch pictures, lost little girls looking for their mamas. While the book whore sits in this room, she is three years old again and no one can see her.

Never in my wildest dreams would I expect this to be fulfilled, but it is a happy place for me. A room with no echo, that feels heavily laden, that smells safe and makes me smile.