Thomas Jefferson once said that he could not live without books. I wear that quote around the lanyard that hangs over my chest each day. His words – and his philosophy and love for books – literally hangs about my heart. I adore the way the pages of an old book smell when you crack it open for the first time in decades. The way it sounds and feels, the look of the broken aged paper that falls as you read. I also love new books, the perfect white, the super tight binding just begging you to break it.
I love books, but I’m not careful with books at all. I’ve bought books over a hundred years old, and they fall apart as I read them over and over again, and I don’t care. I’ll simply buy another. I love the book, but I don’t love it in the way that I’ll set it on a shelf to preserve it. I’d rather love it by destroying it. At least that is what “true” book lovers tell me.
Recently, I cut the pictures from a book and hung them on my wall. It was an art book, and filled with pictures of Shakespearean themed paintings and drawings. I love them. I loved them so much, I had to put them on the wall. Another teacher saw my wall, and liked the collage I had created, but asked how I could fathom destroying a book to cut out the prints. It was only when I told her that the it was a cheap book I had bought used that her rage seemed assuaged. But the thing is, I am not entirely sure that that mattered to me.
I do love books. I love books more deeply I think than just about anybody. I love their power and their amazing ability to capture me in an unimaginable way. I long for the books I don’t own, and often miss books when I am apart from them. I take comfort in my books. But I don’t treasure books. I love them in this moment, not worrying about the next. I make love violently with my books, ripping, shredding, even cutting out my favorite parts. To some, that is sick. I can only imagine what librarians reading this must be thinking. But my love is as genuine as theirs. Books exist to be loved; my way of loving my books is just different and not always accepted. But that’s ok. I suppose many of us are familiar with loving in a taboo way, a way not allowed. But we still love. And I’ll love my books too, even if in ways that others will never understand.
