Yes, I’m a woman. But I have never understood the attraction of owning so many pairs of shoes that they become a storage problem in need of a storage solution. Until I saw the movie In Her Shoes, when Rose Feller explains to her sister Maggie why she buys so many pairs, but hardly wears any of them. “When I feel bad I like to treat myself. Clothes never look any good…food just makes me fatter…shoes always fit.”
Okay, that makes sense to me. It’s the way I feel about books. Buying a new book, buying a used book, borrowing a book or re-reading a book I already own, is my personal quick fix for feeling better. When I feel bad, I too, like to treat myself. If I feel like I need a vacation, browsing the Travel section of a bookstore, preferably coffee table books about Italy, the Louvre or the castles of Germany, can be an inexpensive way to visit a European country. When I want to indulge in decadent desserts with absolutely no risk to my waistline, cookbooks are a safe option. But my all time favorite thing to do, especially in the summertime when I can read in the park, is to take a trip to the public library, pick out ten mystery novels and spend the remainder of the weekend and the following three weeks immersed in volumes of murdered corpses and those who solve the conundrums of their deaths. For a person who is not particularly fond of violence, this is my one exception—after all, it is fiction. When life gets just a little too much to deal with, my best defense is a selection from J. D. Robb’s In Death series or one of the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly. If the world has really thrown me a curve ball, that’s when I reach for the hard core stuff, like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and read until I am ready to deal with the issue at hand.
I went through grade school being called a bookworm and spent my high school days answering to the nickname “Dictionary.” On days when work is so busy and hectic, when break time rolls around, sometimes all I want to do is read—eating is immaterial; if I don’t read, I reach critical mass faster than it takes a Lamborghini to go from 0 to 60 mph (3.59 seconds) and it’s not a pretty sight. (I mean me reaching critical mass.) I don’t even need to actually read the book; sometimes just flipping through the pages, or if it’s illustrated, just looking at the pictures, is enough to put a fresh spin on a bad day.
Do I sound weird? Well, they actually have a word for people like me. A ‘bibliophile’ is a person who admires, reads and collects books while ‘bibliophilia’ is the love of books, although the term is controversial, some arguing that it’s incorrect usage, others claiming that it is a relatively new expression. I think ‘bibliophilia’ is the perfect word to describe the addiction I have had all my life—well, at least since I learned how to read.
Aside from the view—I can see the ocean from my living room window—first time visitors to my apartment almost always comment on the number of books I own. In my living room, I have a library wall that houses my TV and a medium sized media collection, but on either side of this center section are two gloriously wide and spacious compartments designed to hold books. On the opposite wall of my living room, and matching the wall unit, is a freestanding bookcase, narrower in stature but no less impressive in its capacity to hold the L to Z portion of my personal library. (Yes, the books are arranged in alphabetical order.) Then there is a hand-me-down set of bookshelves, no less loved or treasured, that house my special collection. These are the books that are separated from the rest of the pack because I read them over and over again. They are a mixture of inspirational, non-fiction, fiction and children’s books. They tell stories that heal all that is wrong with the world; they feature heroes and heroines that get wounded, get knocked down, get up and who, at the end of the tale, conquer or at least have learned something new about themselves. These are the stories I have culled over the years that speak to my heart and resonate in my soul. These are the stories that in some way tell my story—and so I read them again and again, just to make sure that I am still okay.
Having them all around me, in plain view is an important part of bibliophilia. They sit on their bookshelves, in their appointed places, at the ready. They remind me, that in a world that seems chaotic and where senseless things randomly happen, sometimes there are definitive answers—there are stories worth telling and reading over and over.
