Stuck in the Pages of My Love

Today is Valentine's Day! I don't mind that it's a highly commercial day- so what if Hallmark makes a few dollars? It's a day to celebrate love- in all its forms.

So today- I'm going to dedicate this shout-out to my library, whom I love very dearly. I designed and built my wall of shelves to help with the stacks of books that were growing on every surface of my bedroom. My consumer priorities have always been books then food, then everything else - so I have acquired a decent-sized collection over the years. With these new shelves, I thought I'd have a place to put them and have more room to keep growing. Well unfortunately, it was completely filled as soon as they were done and the stacks around my room are growing again.

Sometimes at night, I like to lay back and look at all of them and think of all the people who I read them with and the places they've been with me. I've sprinkled a few treasures from my adventures and travels in there as well- a buffalo horn from Colorado, an old WWII flask from a trip with my Grandfather, a birdhouse I built with my dad when I was 10, my Outstanding English Student award from High School, a painting from one of my best and oldest friends, 3 of my favorite beers (a Scottish pine ale, my favorite pumpkin beer, and an Alaskan ale), a deer jaw bone from a hike through the Michigan dunes, etc. It's my monument to everything I hold dear.

Valentine's day is about loving people- those we see every day, those who are far away, and even those that are stuck in the pages of novels. I hope you all know how dear you are to me!

Happy, happy love day!
Hope it's as sweet and sugary and wonderful as it should be.

Your Valentine,
MK

Flipping through the pages...

The Hardcover

I just received a copy of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The opening line seems promising: 

"Linderwall was a large kingdom, just east of the Mountains of Morning, where philosophers were highly respected and the number five was fashionable"

My book list keeps piling up and because they're all electronic books, I find it hard to figure out what to read first. You can't peruse through your Kindle books the same way you can through the hard copies; you can't look for interesting chapters or take a one-second peek at the end to gage what you're getting yourself in for. I find it hard to decide which book to read without my computer present to make pro-and-con lists.

And so the pile keeps building but I haven't been reading. 

I love my Kindle, god knows I do. I love highlighting my favorite passages and having all my favorite books with me everywhere I go. I love the e-ink technology and the instant dictionary. But it feels so limiting when all I want to do when I finish a book is go flip through the pages and re-read all my favorite parts. Clicking through your bookmarks just isn't the same. 

So today this old, used, library-version of some highly-rated, young adult stories has made it's way to me and I can't do anything but read it, because this book in my hands- the feel, the smell, the weight-
 it feels like home.  

Someday, they will perfect the ebook, they will simulate everything I love about real books and that will be the end to this debate, but until that day a hardcover will always take all.