Oh, the Places You'll Go

This is actually a reworking of a piece I originally posted in the summer of 2003.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go…

“Some books are meant to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested.”
--Francis Bacon

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
--Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I am a book junkie. Just as I have to breathe, I have to read. My security blanket is not warm and fuzzy; it is square with rough edges and a shiny hard cover, but I sleep with it just the same. I rarely use my library card, preferring instead to hoard my money and spend my hard-earned cash on books, so after I am finished reading, I can keep them. One does not throw away their childhood stuffed animals; I cannot part with my books. Is there anything more delicious than picking up a brand new book, running your fingertips lovingly over the spine, feeling the coarse edges of the pages as you flip through them, and finally—after much internal fanfare—opening the front cover and hearing the satisfying split of the binding. The split that marks the initiation of the brand-new to the cherished. The split that allows the book to say to the world: Not only was I anticipated, paid for with hard-earned currency, and read, I was treasured.

Perhaps the only thing more delicious than a brand-new book is an old tattered, worn-out book. These are the books that show I don’t just see words on a page or even just pictures in my mind. I see a time in space and a space in time. I know where I was and what was happening in my life during the reading of these books. Each tattered copy marks not just a novel finished, but a landmark on my mind or—if I’m really lucky—in my life.

At the sight of my tattered copy of Little House on the Prairie, I recall curling up in a ball underneath piles of blankets while my dad read to my sister and me. I was so young that I didn’t understand a lot of the story, but I remember how the edge of the mattress would cut into my neck. I was unable to move—paralyzed with pleasure at the images the words were conjuring.

The scent of lilacs today reminds me of a warm spring at the end of eighth grade. I sat in our backyard as flowers bloomed and I sobbed over the ending to Sharon Creech’s poignant Walk Two Moons.

Whenever I see a Hemingway book today, I remember one Saturday night in my sophomore year in college. My roommate and I were taking a novels class, and instead of dressing up to go out with our friends, we curled up (she on our depressed-looking futon, and I on my lofted bed) with our copies of In Our Time. Every few pages we would pause to wait for the other to catch up or exclaim over what was happening. All of the stories were better because they were shared.

I was not allowed to watch television while I was growing up (a gift I will never be able to fully thank my mother for, despite the hours I spend in front of the TV now). From an early age I watched pictures in my head instead of on the screen. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is book that took me to a new time and space. I was not prepared for Narnia, the lion, the witch, or most especially, that wardrobe. The idea that one could escape into a different world from such an ordinary, mundane thing as a closet! Although the story has dissipated somewhat in my mind, the memories of wonder, awe, and plain and simple pleasure have evolved from feelings to moments of time and space inside me. For me, Narnia—or Alice’s Wonderland—or that Wrinkle in Time—is not found through a door in my closet, but inside a 6x8-inch square sitting on my bookshelf.