I love to read.

I love getting caught up in whatever it is that I am reading – whether it be fiction or truth.

Mostly, I love to read real books, not computer screens. To feel the book in my hands, its weight, its texture, its promise…
Oh, how I love to crack open the spine of a new book, knowing I am the first person to view its pages, take in its secret, allow its communion to wash over me and give me respite from the world.

As much as a new book, I love to read old books.
Whether borrowed from a library or a friend, or given to me by someone cleaning out an office or home, they are cherished before I even open them.

The scent of an old book is like a shoo-fly pie, slowly baking in my mother’s kitchen – its sticky molasses aroma taking over all the rooms of the house while mouths water in the waiting…

Opening those old, worn-out books is like setting off on an adventure. An adventure where I will be meeting all those who have scanned the book’s crisp-white to dull-yellow to crinkly-edged pages before it was in my hands. I long to journey through the memories and feelings left behind by all those companions I will never know any other way.

In all those books, I love to encounter the author, the writer, the poet behind the words. What did he love? How did she live? In her tall tales, she reveals. In his biography of another, he feels. It is a burden, a joy, a delight to write. It is a burden, a joy, a delight to receive that which has been written.

And, it is a gift, really, a blessing that they never actually sit together – the author and the reader. In their never meeting, their never speaking, unanswered questions can stay perfectly answered by the imagination; longings for more can spark the tendency to hope without knowing; and heroic creators can live where the heart of none exist.

Oh, how I love to read!