reconfiguring my senses

Finals are over, what is the first thing I do? Read a book of my own choosing. Or rather, finish the book I started during the semester, forced myself to put aside, and then picked up again last week as I procrastinated a little. Big mistake, after I had picked it up again it was a struggle to put it down every time. I read the last third of it today.

I love books that you don't want to be over. I love books that make you cry. I love books that you don't want to give back to the person you borrowed it from. I love books that will have a part of you in them, always, because you let it in, or it finds its way in, to the innermost part of you and that can't help but colour the pages a little. I love books that will be a part of you, always. I love books that you just don't want to let out of your possession. I love books that know me.

I have to give this book back to its owner because it means as much, or more, to her as it does to me. Which is a comfort. And a part of me will always be in it. I'll buy my own copy, fresh and new. And it won't have our history, until I read it again, sometime in the future, at which time I will be a different person, and I will colour its pages differently, recording a different history.

Whenever I got books from the library, I always wondered about all of the people who had read the book before me. How something of each of them was in the book, and if only I knew how, it could become a portal into these other people's lives-- only the part of their life when they were reading the book of course. But those are the book's secrets, which it doesn't divulge. Each book is a history of many different people.

This, and the fact that they're free, is why I like libraries. But the downside is that you have to give those books back, and what if you've created a strong, treasured, rare relationship with that book? You're just expected to let it go? It's like letting a piece of yourself go. For the benefit of others I guess, if they think like I do.

All of this is also why I like to let people borrow my books-- only if they're right, lending books is a risk. What if they don't love it like I loved it? What if they don't treat it well? What if they don't give it back? But if you choose well, you can find the right people to lend to, and when you get the book back, it will have given more, it will have been given more, it will be different, enriched, more experienced, closer to fulfilling its ultimate goal: to give its gift to as many people as possible.