Books

I absolutely LOVE them! I’m talking about the physical paper books, not the digital ones. Although, I’ve read a few of the digital ones and they’re easier at night just because of the light issue. But the paper ones…ah! The smell of the printed page is all its own.

I remember being in grade school and we had this book club sort of thing. I think it may have been once a year or maybe twice. Anyway, the teacher would hand out these multi-page flyers that were made out of that newspaper type of material. There were books with their pictures and descriptions and prices on there. It was like a drug for me. I usually would just be able to get 2 or 3 books from the list. But I do remember one time I ordered 12! I don’t remember if I had to pay for them myself, with allowance money or if my mom paid for them. Back then, they wouldn’t have been very much for each book, like not much more than a couple of dollars for the high-end books which I highly doubt I picked out. Ah! Nirvana!! Obviously it impacted me enough that I still remember it to this day.

I’ve always loved going to the library. Again, the smell of the library was its own unique signature. Aromatic, I guess you could say. I used to read a lot and went to the library often. When I was pregnant with Dear Son, I was so sick that I had to stay home, but whenever I had a good day, I’d go to the library to pick out books that would last me for the next two weeks. I’d also read the backs of the books and make a note of them for a list of future books to check out. Some of the books I still remember and wish I could remember the names so I could read them again. Which maybe is silly considering the bazillions of books out there. But I don’t like to read just anything, so that cuts the number down considerably.

I like Westerns, fantasy, espionage/mystery types, some biography, and definitely humor. I like the classics too, even the young reader types like Bambi, Huckleberry Fin, Treasure Island, White Fang. I haven’t read those in a long time, but I would go back to them if I got the urge. A good book will always be a good book. One of my top favorites is a book called Born of the Sun by John H. Culp. It’s just so darn fun to read. It’s about a boy who moves to southern Texas to his uncle’s cattle ranch back in the 1800’s. He has all sorts of adventures including going on a cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail up to Abilene, Kansas. It’s hilarious and it’s written in the vernacular of the time, which I always love. I found it for like fifty cents in paperback at a used book place a long time ago. I’ve looked for copies for years but it was hard to find. Then one day I was looking in the iBooks library and there it was! I promptly bought it for a backup and read it again.

A really cool thing that happens every year here is the local libraries all get together and pool all of their discards into one gigantic sale. They have all of the books in a huge warehouse sized building on around a hundred tables. There are open boxes of books under the tables and they even have cases of books already boxed up and stacked along the wall. I guess those are sort of like a book grab-bag with just the genre written on the outside of the box. They have the different genres in sections on the tables, so it’s easier to pick what you want. There are also magazines. I didn’t get to go this year, but I’m planning on it next year. It’s so easy to spend hours in there. They have it for 3 days, but the first day is reserved for the people who help set the thing up. It’s pretty packed with people on the second day. It seems like paperbacks are .50-.75, and hardbacks are $1.-1.50. They have a special section for the higher end books and they are $2.-$4. Call me a nerd, but I get really excited to go.

I’m not nearly as bad as my brother though. He’s a true bibliophile to the extreme. As in book hoarder. He has so many (10’s of thousands) that he has storage units filled with them. I don’t even know how many. It’s scary to think about. I know there are some really good, valuable books among them, but there are also a lot of truly useless material too. i.e. old college textbooks. I’m a long way from that, but I do need another bookcase….

(This post was inspired by Laura from Riddle From The Middle who wrote about her love of books. Check out her post from the link above!)