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Sometimes we’ll choose a book that’s all wrong for us; that’s a peril of the reading life. Sometimes we’ll read through a string of mediocre titles, or we’ll find ourselves in a slump. Sometimes we’ll read a perfectly good book, but the timing’s all wrong; the same book means different things to different people, or in different seasons of life. Since reading is personal, it can be tricky. (Not such a commodity after all, eh?)
frustration. They’re certain their taste is questionable, their opinions are wrong, their reading habits are poor, and it’s only a matter of time before the Book Police track them down.
Reader, whatever secret you’re keeping, it’s time to spill it. I’ll take your confession, but the absolution is unnecessary. These secrets aren’t sins; they’re just secrets. No need to repent. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Friendship . . . is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” Reader, you’re not the only one. Keep confessing to your fellow readers; tell them what your reading life is really like. They’ll understand. They may even say, “You too?” And when they do, you’ve found a friend. And the beginnings of a great book club.
Can every devoted reader point back to the book that hooked them on the story? I’d like to think so. Not a book they appreciate, or grudgingly respect, but the one that captivated them, the one they didn’t want to put down, the one that made them decide, for themselves, to make reading a part of their life, forever.
Some of my best ideas are born of envy. Not the green-with-it sort, but that brand with which many readers are familiar: book envy. Or more specifically in this instance, bookshelf envy.
Envy is a deadly sin, but bookshelf envy has proven to be a source of inspiration. Reorganizing my shelves has changed the way I think about books and the people who write them. Here on these shelves I’ve gathered my own inner circle: the books I feel closest to, the people who matter to me.
A good book allows me to step into another world, to experience people and places and situations foreign to my own day-to-day existence. I love experiencing the new, the novel, the otherwise impossible—especially when I can do it from my own comfy chair. Books
Books provide a safe space to encounter new and unfamiliar situations, to practice living in unfamiliar environments, to test-drive encounters with new people and new experiences.
“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” We are readers. This is how we decorate.
L’Engle once wrote, “The great thing about getting older is you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” She writes in The Irrational Season, “I am not an isolated fifty-seven years old; I am every other age I have been, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . all the way up to and occasionally beyond my present chronology.”
Just as I’m all the ages I have been, I’m all the readers I have been.
Sometimes a social obligation keeps my reading on schedule. Book club is obvious—how many readers spend an entire month not reading, only to read two hundred pages in the twenty-four hours before book club?
Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
When I find myself in a dreaded reading slump, nothing boosts me out of it faster than revisiting an old favorite. Old books, like old friends, are good for the soul. But they’re not just comfort reads. No, a good book is exciting to return to, because even though I’ve been there before, the landscape is always changing. I notice something new each time I read a great book.
As Italo Calvino wrote, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Great books keep surprising me with new things.
Heraclitus also wrote, “A man’s character is his fate.”
A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say. It’s not the same book, and we’re not the same reader.
Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, but we readers know one’s bookshelves reveal just as much.
My reading log turned into an unexpected vehicle for self-discovery.
We are readers. Books grace our shelves and fill our homes with beauty; they dwell in our minds and occupy our thoughts. Books prompt us to spend pleasant hours alone and connect us with fellow readers. They invite us to escape into their pages for an afternoon, and they inspire us to reimagine our lives. Good reading journals provide glimpses of how we’ve spent our days, and they tell the story of our lives.
