Books and Me

My relationship with books is a complicated one. Kind of like a sitcom, it was on again off again until true love hit for reals.

Books and I were close when I was little. My mom and I would go to the library often. I would get books, she would get books, and we would meet back up. I had my own library card from when I wasn't yet old enough to know what a signature was. Back in those days (the 80s), the print outs that they gave you with the books didn't come with the titles, just with the number from the library's catalog. After my mom got fed up with me getting library books mixed up with my own and paying late fees and just general nonsense, the rule was that once we got home I had to go through all the books and write down the titles next to the numbers they corresponded with. At the time I thought it was tedious and I remember it taking forever. It really doesn't seem like that big a deal now, although I think I was actually writing out the entire titles instead of just one unique word. Well, joke's on me I guess.

Around middle school/early high school I kind of lost interest in books. Adult books were still too adult for me, so I didn't read those. I tried to read well-known kids books or books I remembered liking when I was younger, but my mom disapproved of that. She told me I needed to be reading things more appropraite to my age group. But the problem was that YA fiction is, mostly, about teenagers. And I hated teenagers. I didn't like them before I was one, during my time as one, and I don't particularly like the idea of them today. I don't know if she really expected me to read Sweet Valley High or some sort of sci-fi thing, but those didn't interest me at all. Sometimes I would read stuff like Jurassic Park and the sequel, but otherwise it was kind of a not very reading period. This time also corresponded with me having cable for the first time, and living across the street from my best friend. Read (ha, see what I did there?) into that as you will.

It was Star Wars that saved me. After I saw the re-releases when I was 14, I went, well, a little gaga for the whole thing. And so I bought books and got them from the library and read and read. And that slowly brought me back to the reading thing, although high school certainly tried to squash it out of me by making me read boring classics that I couldn't relate to in the slightest. Listen, Tess of the Durberville's, if I got raped in the forest by my cousin, I would say something about it, not be so vague that the teacher had to explain it to us the next morning!

When I moved to college I was still 17, so when I went to the library to get a library card, they wouldn't let me. I was so angry that I went straight to a bookstore and bought a Star Wars book. I still don't think I've read it yet (like so many people, after the prequels started to be released, my interest began to wane). Anyway, eventually I got a library card and life was good again. I didn't read a ton, school still had me reading quite a bit, but I was reading.

Shortly after college I moved in with my boyfriend at the time. Not a lot of reading got done then either. We lived in a one bedroom, and the only places to read where on the couch, where he was usually watching TV, or in the bed, which I did before going to sleep but not much besides that. Sigh. Dark time in my life.

When we broke up and I moved out, I knew it was very important for me to have a reading chair - something big and comfy that I would want to read in. So for $50 on Craigslist, I bought me a chair. And it is stunning. Big enough to lie across, so very soft, so very comfy. A little bit of danger in that I want to fall asleep in it, but mostly it's fine. I put it in the living room, at an awkward angle from the TV. I made a rule - I wasn't allowed to sit in it unless I was reading.

And so the reading began in earnest. And I got more obsessed with it and now I want to READ ALL THE BOOKS. But what are you gonna do?

Now the chair is in the bedroom, nowhere near a TV. And I love it. And books.