Reading books can be a means of escape

Thomas Jefferson and I agree on one thing, "I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice . . ."

After three strenuous weeks I have managed to clean and reorganize the bookcase in the hallway. It had needed doing for quite some time as the books were all haphazard and tended to reach out and grab passersby. Plus the stacks on the floor on either side threatened to topple at any given moment.

It didn't take long to empty the shelves and clean the bookcase. What took so long was putting them back on the shelves. It was like reacquainting myself with long-lost friends. Such things can't be hurried.

I leafed through a set of mechanic's manuals from the 1930's and discovered that they once belonged to my grandfather's brother. I doubt if he used them much as none of the pages were stained with grease.

Next to those went the set of hardbound Mark Twain's. They had originally occupied several shelves in the secretary my grandmother once had. I wasn't supposed to touch them. Reading them was a delicious secret I kept from her. She pretended not to notice.

I picked up "The Prince and the Pauper" and was surprised to find my grandfather's name written in pencil on the second page. Almost a half an hour later it went on the shelf beside the others.

And so it went. Erma Bombeck took an afternoon. At one time I wanted to be like her and write a weekly column. I will never be in her league but I still enjoy the weekly conversation with those who read these words.

I happened on my collection of Tony Hillerman novels. These are mysteries that I always read twice. I read them once for the story - who committed the crime and why. They I read them more slowly for the anthropology. They are set in Navajo land and the Navajo in the books have a different way of looking at things than I do. I had wondered why I hadn't seen any new novels by Hillerman recently so I looked it up and discovered that he had died. Guess my collection of his novels is complete.

Some books made me laugh. Some made me think. Some I picked up and before I knew it had tears rolling down my face from the awful things that the main character went through.

I love to read. One of the big disappointments of my life was that they didn't teach me to read on the first day of school. Once I learned I never stopped. I can't imagine not reading. Newspapers, magazines, hardbacks, paperback, I love them all.

I tend to purchase paperbacks because I like the way they feel in my hands. I like the way they smell. I like the way that most of them are the same size. I especially like the way the ink on their pages transports me to another place.

When I read I can be anything. I can be anywhere. I can escape my own life and lead someone else's. I can be a prince or a pauper, young or old. I can cry or laugh and no matter what happens on the page it is different than real life. Sometimes real life is too hard. When I was little I would dive into a book and enter another world.

I discovered science fiction when I happened upon Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," which I have somewhere. Oh, the possibilities that opened up. I went on to Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. Time travel, robots, interplanetary travel. Wow! I revisited them all.

Along the way I committed what is for me the ultimate sacrilege - I threw books into the trash. I feel a wave of guilt just typing it. There were books that I didn't care for the first time and will never read again. There were books with their covers stuck together. There were books that I had no reason to keep.

It was not easy to get rid of them. Someone had put a lot of time and effort into writing those words. I felt like I was destroying parts of their souls. These were my friends. OK. So what if they had hung around for years and I had never gotten around to meeting them and reading their words?

Now, I need to tackle the next bookcase and get it straightened up. I hope it goes faster than the last one did.[[In-content Ad]]