...and I held it close to me 'till it was breathless
I stayed home sick yesterday. I ate a million popsicles and finally finished that book I put down weeks ago.
Isn't there something sad about finishing a book? I get really excited when I have very few pages left and then, it's all gone and it's over. The story is over. Dead.
I ate a few more popsicles and watched some television before I finished the final ten pages. Delaying the inevitable.
I'm sort of famous for being a putter-downer. I'll read a book for a while, and love it and (without making a conscious decision) leave it on my coffee table for weeks to stew before I pick it up again. I might never pick it up again. I might let it go on living somewhere in my mind for a long, long time.
I sometimes think that the way that I am with books is the way I am with most friendships. I have a beautiful, enchanted romance for chapters 1-3 and then I never come back to you. I might pick up a friendship and read from the beginning again, because I forgot with what delicate and precise language it was written, but I'll never get past chapter 3. I'll love all of it again but put it down and pick up another to read for a while. And on it goes.
I wonder if a book, when it is picked up, lusts for someone to hold it until it's death and never to set it down. I wonder if a book would like to be loved for it's entire life. You know? Or is all of this personification of a paperback a little too much?
I was always jealous of Kelly, the older sister of the girl across the street. She would spend an entire day with a book and get to the end before she fell asleep. She would stack them like trophies on the floor of her bedroom. Her bedroom was pink cluttered with porcelain dolls and smelled like nail polish. Even then, I remember thinking that she was doing something right. She was treating those books with such attention like reading them was the most important event in the world just then - for the entire day. Needless to say that when they were finished they were an merely stacked as an accomplishment and blurred into all the rest. These were also terrible books. Thrillers as I remember. Thick ones ones in hardbacks with raised blood dripping down the paper cover. But all the same, I was jealous of the way she loved them.
How do you love them?
I stayed home sick yesterday. I ate a million popsicles and finally finished that book I put down weeks ago.
Isn't there something sad about finishing a book? I get really excited when I have very few pages left and then, it's all gone and it's over. The story is over. Dead.
I ate a few more popsicles and watched some television before I finished the final ten pages. Delaying the inevitable.
I'm sort of famous for being a putter-downer. I'll read a book for a while, and love it and (without making a conscious decision) leave it on my coffee table for weeks to stew before I pick it up again. I might never pick it up again. I might let it go on living somewhere in my mind for a long, long time.
I sometimes think that the way that I am with books is the way I am with most friendships. I have a beautiful, enchanted romance for chapters 1-3 and then I never come back to you. I might pick up a friendship and read from the beginning again, because I forgot with what delicate and precise language it was written, but I'll never get past chapter 3. I'll love all of it again but put it down and pick up another to read for a while. And on it goes.
I wonder if a book, when it is picked up, lusts for someone to hold it until it's death and never to set it down. I wonder if a book would like to be loved for it's entire life. You know? Or is all of this personification of a paperback a little too much?
I was always jealous of Kelly, the older sister of the girl across the street. She would spend an entire day with a book and get to the end before she fell asleep. She would stack them like trophies on the floor of her bedroom. Her bedroom was pink cluttered with porcelain dolls and smelled like nail polish. Even then, I remember thinking that she was doing something right. She was treating those books with such attention like reading them was the most important event in the world just then - for the entire day. Needless to say that when they were finished they were an merely stacked as an accomplishment and blurred into all the rest. These were also terrible books. Thrillers as I remember. Thick ones ones in hardbacks with raised blood dripping down the paper cover. But all the same, I was jealous of the way she loved them.
How do you love them?
posted by j-e-s-s-i-c-a at 10:50 AM
2 Comments:
When I start a book I have to finish it whether I like the book or not. I also cannot read a book more than once even if I haven't read it in years because I hate that I already know what happens. Finally, I can only read one book at a time because I am monogamous like that.
Fool
I've got Pokemon syndrome when it comes to books. I gotta' catch 'em all. I know I could borrow books from the library. Heck I'm there every other weekend to pick up more books-on-cd for my daily commute. I've got this need to own the book I'm reading, though. Since reading a whole book is more of an accomplishment than it ought to be for me, I need to celebrate it. I do this by taking the book and dropping it into the pile of books surrounding my already full bookcase. I don't need to stack them like your childhood friend, but I do share the urge to have a minor monument to my reading habits. It's akin to checking the box next to a freshly completed task on a to do list. It's all about closure.
I'm also a more voracious book buyer than I am a book reader. I've always got a half dozen books I'm in the middle of reading and another few that I've never even opened. Every couple years I have to drop a box full of books off at the library. I feel a little ashamed doing it, like I'm abandoning a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage. Rather than admitting I have a problem I just sweep it into the stacks of the library when the evidence begins to pile up.
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