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If this has happened to you—if the right book has almost magically appeared in your life at the right time to hold your hand for the journey—you know it feels like a special kind of grace.
As a devoted reader, I lovingly give countless hours to finding the right books for me. I don’t think those hours are wasted; part of the fun of reading is planning the reading. But I’ve learned that sometimes, despite my best efforts, a book unexpectedly finds me and not the other way around. And when it does, it’s okay to reshuffle my To Be Read list and go with it.
The best books move you, drawing out the full range of emotions from the reader, and sometimes that includes breaking your heart.
I don’t relish crying over a book, but I’ll say this: it’s not easy to earn a reader’s tears—and if an author writes well enough to earn mine, I’m in. Pass the tissues. It’s time to read.
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.
People read for a multiplicity of reasons. Nearly forty years in, I can tell you why I inhale books like oxygen: I’m grateful for my one life, but I’d prefer to live a thousand—and my favorite books allow me to experience more on the page than I ever could in my actual life. 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 draw us deeply into the lives of others, showing us the world through someone else’s eyes, page after page. They take us to new and exciting places while meeting us right where we are, whisking us away to walk by the Seine or through a Saharan desert or down a Manhattan sidewalk.
With apologies to Kathleen Kelly, what I’ve come to learn is this: if my real life reminds me of something I read in a book, I’m reading well—and I’m probably living well, too.
“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.
You can’t put the book you just finished behind you because you still want to live it. You have a terrible book hangover, and it lasts three days. Ibuprofen does nothing for it. You’re sad because whatever you read next can’t possibly be as good as the book you just finished. You despair because nothing you read can possibly be as good, ever again.
You have more books than shoes. You have more books than bookshelves. You do some quick math and realize how much money is tied up in your book collection. You suspect your books equal the gross domestic product of a small nation. You accept that it’s time to cull your personal library. You lovingly handle each book, determining if it brings you joy. It does. They all do. You are full of bookish joy, but still woefully short on shelf space.
Just as I’m all the ages I have been, I’m all the readers I have been.
I’m the sum of all these bookish memories. My head is so full of musings and insights and ideas from books that I’m not sure who I would be or how I would think if they were all taken away.
As a devoted reader, I know what it means for books to shape you—the person you are, the person you were then. For readers, the great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other readers you’ve been. Sometimes you think fondly of the readers you used to be; sometimes looking back makes you cringe a little. But they’re still here. They’re still you.
Book lovers have strong feelings about bookish scents; some of us get poetic about the distinctive smell of freshly inked paper, or old cloth-covered hardcovers, or a used bookstore. I’ve never cared for the smell of used bookstores myself, but as a devoted reader, I’ve noticed how the books themselves serve as portals to my past, conjuring similarly powerful memories. There’s something about glimpsing, and especially handling, a book from long ago that takes me right back to where I was when I first read it. The book triggers memories of why I picked it up, how it made me feel, what was going
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I love bookstores because I love books. In a bookstore, books are the stars.
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.”
Old books, like old friends, are good for the soul.
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.
I have hopes and dreams for my kids, as parents do. I hope they’ll live right and live well, find love and fulfilling work, and not endure too much heartbreak on the way. And I also, specifically, hope that one day—when they’re old enough to choose for themselves, apart from me—they’ll discover that they too are book people. One day, not as far off as I would like, they’ll head to the bookstore with friends, or on a date, or on a quiet weekend afternoon to spend a pleasant hour by themselves. Not out of habit or duty, but because reading is part of who they are. It’s in their blood. They’re
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When we share our favorite titles, we can’t help but share ourselves as well. Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, but we readers know one’s bookshelves reveal just as much.
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.
