Tuesday, March 09, 2010

bibliolove

Books, books, books!! I can't get enough of them. I love them. I love to read them, to listen to them, to try to write them. They're my vice, my thing I can't seem to quite get under control. At the bookstore, I can browse and browse for hours, lost in the very covers of the books, even before picking them up to see what they're about. One of my husband's theater friends wrote and produced a play about fonts. Fascinating! No, seriously! The fonts were the characters. So cool! I think about fonts and in what font I would want a book I wrote (if ever I finished it) to be published. Exploring books and how they're put together is something of an obsession for me.

I rarely can walk out of a book store or library without a book in hand. This is to the great dismay of my husband, who is sick of the piles of books all over our small house. "Have you read this one?" he'll ask me, pointing at a novel on the shelf. "Well, no, not yet--but I will!" Then he'll go on to the next one. "How about this one?" I grit my teeth and try to explain that I do intend to read them all someday--but he doesn't understand. And I do read--really, I do. There just isn't enough time in the day for leisurely reading. These days I read a lot of Dr. Seuss and Pat the Bunny, to appease my one year old. And I marvel at his love of books, too. He has a giant shelf of them, already. I'm training him well.

My husband was very thoughtful in that he got me a subscription to Audiobookworm.com, which is like Netflix but for audiobooks on CD. So far I've listened to 4 or 5, on my commute to and from work. I just finished _Farenheit 451_. What? you say, you haven't read THAT book by now?? Heretic! I know, but now that I got the extreme honor of listening to it--read by the author himself, no less, I feel like a better person. It's beautiful, this book. Poetry! Deeply disturbing poetry, which has become even more relevant today because so many of his imaginings have come true. Amazing. Such delicious words! I implore you to listen to this book. Or read it. Re-read it as the case may be. It will change your perspective.

I even love books about writing books. It's manaical. I can't explain it. It scares people. I worked at libraries all through college. Perhaps this made my vice worse? I don't know. I just know that I have to be near books. They're like my air.

4 comments:

The Moviegoer said...

First of all, thank you for shaming me into adding Fahreheit 451 to my list. One of the many gaps in education. But I'm trying to catch up! I think I'm in the middle of six books at the moment. Nice post, Ms. Betsy.

d

The Moviegoer said...

And perhaps after I read it, I'll know how to spell it. Ahem, Farenheit 451.

Unknown said...

Farenheit 451 blew my mind when I read it as a kid, and I still find the book frighteningly accurate in its predictions of the future- particularly the one about people watching other people being hunted down by the authorities on their tv for entertainment.

And I am totally with you on the book obsession. I have piles of them everywhere too. I think it was a least partly cultivated by all the books stuffed in the living room at the shack. I still am hard-pressed of a better place to relax than in a recliner in front of Rice Creek reading a dusty copy of "All the King's Men" or "The Autobiography of Mark Twain" (both of which I read there).

Somebody recently made me aware of an online bookswap- www.paperbackswap.com. I haven't used it yet, but I hear good things...

Betsy said...

Sorry--my German-teacher husband reminds me it's spelled Fahrenheit...
oops!