“Nobody can teach you anything. This is the first truth. We teach ourselves. All my life I have lived in books, in libraries. I remember every library in my life as I remember my lovers, their smells, the texture of their skin, the taste, even the brightness in the air around them. Or the darkness. Yes, every library is for me like a woman, erotic, a creature of the dark, full of smells and textures, tastes.”
– Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in Borges and Me: An Encounter, Jay Parini
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“lust /Inst/ n. & v. • n. 1 strong sexual desire. 2 a (usu. foll. by for, of) a passionate desire for (a lust for power). b (usu. foll. by of) a passionate enjoyment of (the lust of battle). 3 (usu. in pl.) a sensuous appetite regarded as sinful (the lusts of the flesh). • v.intr. (usu. foll. by after, for) have a strong or excessive (esp. sexual) desire.”
– Della Thompson (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Ninth Edition
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What is it to describe the effect books have on me?
I need them. I need to read. I need the adventure of being lost in the page.
I am not brave, but my curiosity is strong. It expresses itself in the narrow confines of printed text.
I can say I have book lust, plain and simple. I certainly have a strong and excessive desire to acquire and consume books.
I can zoom out, look down at myself with pity at this desire and addiction.
It can’t be helped. But it won’t be the ruin of me. How can reading destroy a man? I like to look at this mania as my mid life crisis. I still haven’t figured out where I belong in the world. I think the next book could offer me an answer.
It’s a fool’s errand but I am a happy fool. And I have modest tastes.
I don’t hunger for the immaculate first edition. I simply want to read. Give me any old edition. However my heart breaks a little when I receive a print on demand copy. It is sterile and devoid of romance. But it’s words I want so I read on regardless.
I make books my own by marking their pages with annotations. Each book I own is transfigured by my hand. This is the conversation I have with the book. As an introvert, I am happiest with these silent conversations.
There is no end in sight. This will be a lifetimes pursuit. There are an infinite number of books for me to read in the years I have.
Books will never run out. What a joyful, marvelous and reassuring thought.
Lucky me!
Conversations With Quotations 