For the month of April, I’m participating in Susannah Conway’s #AprilLove2016 and writing a love letter to a different someone/thing every day. Today’s love letter is to Books.
Dear Books,
You were the original troublemaker, my partner in crime. You were the reason that Mom yelled at me so often for catching me reading under the covers well after bedtime. Then there were the down-the-nose stares of the one mean librarian who would chastise me for taking more books than I could carry (though my adult self would have caught the twinkle in her eye when she said those words). Not to mention the times that I would try to surreptitiously read, with the book half inside my desk, all while trying my best to look like I was still paying attention in class — yea, that didn’t really work. And my first job when I was 16 was as a library page — and that same librarian would give me mean looks when she would catch me between the stacks reading the books I was supposed to be reshelving (there was a little less eye twinkling during these encounters).
I have some friends who aren’t readers and I always wonder: how can you not be a reader? And how are we friends, anyway?? It becomes a personal challenge for me — it’s not that you don’t like reading, it’s that you just haven’t met the right book yet! It’s my own version of a twisted, geeky Dating Game (that I never seem to win, by the way).
These days you don’t get me into as much trouble — except on the nights when you keep me up well past my bedtime even though work will come much too early in the morning — but you’re still my favorite partner in crime. There’s still little I like more than curling up on the couch with a good book, especially when the day is rainy or chilly (sunny days will sometimes compete for my attention from you), and utterly losing myself and all sense of time. It’s so easy to be transported to another world entirely, whether it be a fiction landscape dreamed up by a talented writer or like a virtual lecture hall where I get to listen to some of the most interesting people share their passion.
As Randy Travis would croon, I’m gonna love you, forever and ever, forever and ever, Amen.
Laura.
