finding (and keeping) old friends.
Sometimes, despite the allure (and pressure) of having a stack of brand new books to read, I find myself drifting back to the favorites on my shelf. This week, after finishing "We're in Trouble" (fantastic book, a something-mixed-with-King vibe, five super pointy stilettos, review coming - er, eventually) it happened. I tried to get into the new book stack - there are so many I'm interested in, and even a few that I want to skim one last time before my final review. But did I do that? No. Maybe it seemed too much like work, or maybe I'd read so many brand new books in a row, I'd grown tired of plowing through page after page, not knowing how they were going to end.
So instead of new books, I'm reading "Lucky" by Alice Sebold. Oh, and "Emily of New Moon." And maybe I read a little Harry Potter in there, too, just because my boyfriend's current soccer fever brought to mind the Quidditch Cup in Goblet of Fire.
I am a hapless book re-reader, which confuses some people. Mostly older people, who grew up without the joys of VCRs and TiVo and The Real World airing twenty-seven times a week on MTV. I am not only OF the next generation, I embrace it as a hapless movie and television re-watcher: I watched Ten Things I Hate About You nearly every weekend during my sophomore year of college (Heath Ledger is universally known among sorority girls as the perfect hangover remedy), and last year during the peak of my O.C addiction, I was known to tape an episode and watch it EVERY DAY for the next week, until the new episode aired.
Yes, that's six times in one week. No, there isn't a medication for that.
My affection for certain books knows no bounds. That's why I read all 1100-plus pages of "The Stand" every summer, why my copies of the "Anne of Green Gables" series are held together by enough packing tape to mail an elephant, and why my mother has, on occasion, been known to yell at me for having overfilled bookshelves which teeter to the point of endangerment. My bookshelves are something that may need to be baby-gated, if and when the time comes, just to prevent my mother from having an embolism.
But overfilled bookshelves are the bane of the re-reader, who can't get rid of anything because there's a chance that they may want to read it AGAIN! Most of my favorite books have been read, cover to cover, no fewer than a half a dozen times. It helps that some of my favorite books have been my favorite books for more than ten years running (Hello, The Stand! Order of the Phoenix, maybe you'll be there in a few more years) I know there are libraries with the full range of the Betsy-Tacy series, just for when I'm in the mood for the time Betsy visits Milwaukee and goes through her German stage, but reading the very book that I've owned since I was eight is so much more comforting.
Old books have more memories than library books. Even the tomes have stains and smudges from various confections eaten while read - those are your marks, and they're about more than having a sticky book. (Gross when found in library copy, nostalgic when you remember reading the book while dying Easter eggs.) On my shelf are the aforementioned books held together with tape, because that's the only way they survived a year of abuse being shoved beneath my Geometry book in my backpack; there are books with tiny little bite marks at the tops of the pages, from the attention starved parakeet we used to own. I even know which books I received in the eighties - I know this because I, for a reason now unknown, marked each book with an "80" on the spine. (Never doubt the mind of a nine year old with a sharpie and a full collection of Baby Sitters Club books.)
Those Baby Sitter's Club books currently sit, unread for over ten years, in a box in my parent's basement. So maybe I'm not just a re-reader. I'm a pack rat.
Maybe I've pushed past my week of nostalgia. Right now, I have in my hands a copy of "The DaVinci Code" with a bookmark at chapter 30, because I was lectured that really, I can't have a book blog without reading THE BOOK OF THE MOMENT, (but seriously, now, hasn't it almost overlived its moment?) no matter how many Dateline specials on the topic that I may watch.
But maybe, just maybe, I still have a battle with a dragon left to read.
So instead of new books, I'm reading "Lucky" by Alice Sebold. Oh, and "Emily of New Moon." And maybe I read a little Harry Potter in there, too, just because my boyfriend's current soccer fever brought to mind the Quidditch Cup in Goblet of Fire.
I am a hapless book re-reader, which confuses some people. Mostly older people, who grew up without the joys of VCRs and TiVo and The Real World airing twenty-seven times a week on MTV. I am not only OF the next generation, I embrace it as a hapless movie and television re-watcher: I watched Ten Things I Hate About You nearly every weekend during my sophomore year of college (Heath Ledger is universally known among sorority girls as the perfect hangover remedy), and last year during the peak of my O.C addiction, I was known to tape an episode and watch it EVERY DAY for the next week, until the new episode aired.
Yes, that's six times in one week. No, there isn't a medication for that.
My affection for certain books knows no bounds. That's why I read all 1100-plus pages of "The Stand" every summer, why my copies of the "Anne of Green Gables" series are held together by enough packing tape to mail an elephant, and why my mother has, on occasion, been known to yell at me for having overfilled bookshelves which teeter to the point of endangerment. My bookshelves are something that may need to be baby-gated, if and when the time comes, just to prevent my mother from having an embolism.
But overfilled bookshelves are the bane of the re-reader, who can't get rid of anything because there's a chance that they may want to read it AGAIN! Most of my favorite books have been read, cover to cover, no fewer than a half a dozen times. It helps that some of my favorite books have been my favorite books for more than ten years running (Hello, The Stand! Order of the Phoenix, maybe you'll be there in a few more years) I know there are libraries with the full range of the Betsy-Tacy series, just for when I'm in the mood for the time Betsy visits Milwaukee and goes through her German stage, but reading the very book that I've owned since I was eight is so much more comforting.
Old books have more memories than library books. Even the tomes have stains and smudges from various confections eaten while read - those are your marks, and they're about more than having a sticky book. (Gross when found in library copy, nostalgic when you remember reading the book while dying Easter eggs.) On my shelf are the aforementioned books held together with tape, because that's the only way they survived a year of abuse being shoved beneath my Geometry book in my backpack; there are books with tiny little bite marks at the tops of the pages, from the attention starved parakeet we used to own. I even know which books I received in the eighties - I know this because I, for a reason now unknown, marked each book with an "80" on the spine. (Never doubt the mind of a nine year old with a sharpie and a full collection of Baby Sitters Club books.)
Those Baby Sitter's Club books currently sit, unread for over ten years, in a box in my parent's basement. So maybe I'm not just a re-reader. I'm a pack rat.
Maybe I've pushed past my week of nostalgia. Right now, I have in my hands a copy of "The DaVinci Code" with a bookmark at chapter 30, because I was lectured that really, I can't have a book blog without reading THE BOOK OF THE MOMENT, (but seriously, now, hasn't it almost overlived its moment?) no matter how many Dateline specials on the topic that I may watch.
But maybe, just maybe, I still have a battle with a dragon left to read.
posted by Ann at 5:52 AM
deserves a swift kick
3 Comments:
I am such a pack rat too, I have endless boxes of books I've read but also two big boxes and a tote of books to read, probably more than that actually, I can't help but buying books that look interesting (specially when most of them were only a dollar each), but I can't always keep up with it, but really one day I really will read them all, but my to be read pile will always be bigger than me.
And I love "Lucky", was better than "The Lovely Bones" but that wasn't too bad, I loaned it to my great grandmother (Who's in her 80's) and when she was done she said "She certainly does talk a lot..." about the little girl in the book.
Sorry I kind of rambled, I hope you don't mind my comments.
Andrea: I am always glad to hear from anyone who is as rabid a book lover as myself.
I enjoy lending books to my grandma too!
Ann:
(My sister's name is Ann too, or really Ann-Marie.)
Yay, a fellow person who shares books with their grandmother's, I loaned her two others, she hasn't finished them yet "Poe's Cat" and Girl With A Pearl Earring".
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