March 08, 2005
In which she declares her love of reading
I have been reading Alberto Manguel’s A Reading Diary and something he wrote really made me think. He said, “Reading is a comfortable, solitary, slow and sensuous task.” I agree with the comfortable, solitary and sensuous, but the slow part really threw me for a loop. I have always approached books as something to be devoured as a hungry man would devour food.
Once I finish a book, I am like a junkie looking for his next fix. Should I finish my library books at a time when the library is closed, I set about scouring the house for something, anything to read until I can make my next trip for my next fix to the library or those pushers at Barnes & Noble. The library is my crack house.
And it is not that I do not savor or contemplate what I am reading, because I do. I even keep a book journal in which I record every book I read, often with quotes that speak to me, or that I find funny, interesting, relevant, etc. I often have discussions with friends about books that I have read or am reading. And I cannot wait to pass along my “finds” to friends, almost as if introducing them to a new drug that they just have to try.
I have even begun passing along my love of books to my nephew. His first Christmas gift consisted of three “must-read” children’s books. Should I feel guilty for trying to turn my nephew into as much of an addict as I am? Because I do not. My family is a book family. Everyone in my family (except my sister who I swear is missing several vital genes including the book gene and whatever it is that bestows you with common sense) reads with an insatiable passion. We trade books back and forth. Once we find a new author, a new genre, a new “designer drug” if you will, we pass it along with zest.
I remember my sense of accomplishment when I got my sister not only to enter a library, but also to actually check out a book (as an adult mind you, when we were children she enjoyed the library as much as I did). Yes, it was Harry Potter, but I view that as a gateway book; a tome destined to lead her on to the adult fiction section and even possibly (gasp) mastery of the Dewey Decimal System, and not just books, but a love of books.
I find only one problem with the library and books in general, and that is a sinister genre known simply as the romance novel. Romance novels are like the brown acid at Woodstock. Be warned, because they will send you on quite a bad trip. The worst part about romance novels is that they at the sometimes masquerade as normal, respectable literature and you don’t know what you’ve picked up until you are knee-deep in fifty bad euphemisms for male genitalia. I myself have been fooled upon occasion.
When I actually discover what I have inadvertently borrowed from the library, I feel disgusted and ashamed at myself for having been fooled by the wicked romance novel in disguise. But often it its too late as I am restricted by my self-imposed rule of finishing all books I start from putting the book down. (This is a rule I only break in extreme circumstances, such as discovering how bad Hemingway really is; a revelation that only took until page two of For Whom The Bell Tolls.) Thus, I am often stuck reading the deplorable filth until the last lurid encounter.
I imagine some Patriot Act-enabled government narc reviewing library records and sending out the bad taste police when my transgressions are discovered. I will be tried and convicted for crimes against literature and sent to a literature rehabilitation center staffed by retired English teachers who will attempt to cure me with a strict course of reading therapy, and large doses of Harper Lee, Shakespeare and Kerouac. I will, of course, hide my face in shake as Michiko Kakutani pelts me with eggs and rotten fruit when I am released. I will be assigned a parole officer at Barnes and Noble and will be forced to attend book club meetings for my probation. Moreover, I must be extra-vigilant at the library lest one of those insidious romance novels find its way into my hands again.
zappagrrl at 12:58 a.m.