The Smell of Books

I have a library at home, a series of five bookcases packed with books and then some, books on top, books in a side table, here, there, arranged sort of in the Dewey decimal system I had grown up with.  Paring them down was difficult, and is ongoing.  If I haven't cracked it open within the year, I first check Cash4Books.net to see if they are interested, then go and try to find a home for it before donation to the thrift store.  

Many books are keepers, even if they haven't been referenced within the time frame; some are sentimental favorites, some were read to a small boy in footed pajamas, and some took me places away from here.  They were my second refuge, after the first refuge of my mother lost her way in alcohol, only coming back after the alternative of drinking with her sister was taken, before she became chairbound and my father kept her soused with beer after beer.  There was a period between in which her self returned, during the childhood of her beloved grandson.  When she couldn't bear the turmoil, her drinking gave her a supposed life of gaiety and conversation with the other faces reflected in the mirror behind the bar.  I took to books, gladly.

I had plenty of Little Golden Books with their European style of illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, Garth Williams, and Tibor Gergely.   More involved stories began with Aladdin's Lamp, The Blue Fairy Book,   and the intricacies of Alice in Wonderland; then the vastness of The Swiss Family Robinson, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, King Arthur's Knights of the Roundtable, Hans Brinker, Heidi, and Gulliver's Travels told of worlds, worlds I had no idea existed.  In Gulliver, the hero reaches a land of horses and here Jonathan Swift uses the name Houyhnhnms for their equine civilization.  Huh.  Wow.  Could we get a vowel in there?  Nope, just go for it.  

The library was fairly nearby and Mom was going through her Mandingo phase, so we went every few weeks.  I had watched the movie starring Charleston Heston on television, so the first adult book I picked from the library shelves was The Agony and the Ectasy by Irving Stone, the story of Michaelangelo as he painted the Sistine Chapel.  I was thirteen and wanted to advance my literary acumen beyond Edward Eager's Half Magic.

I loved holding the book in my lap with my legs hanging over the side of the chair arm.  The noise in the house had complained that I was avoiding him by staying upstairs and reading in my room. Um, you bet I was.  So I read in a chair in the living room, and that seemed to shut him up for a while.  The older children's books had mostly lost their dustjackets, so you were holding onto the plain hardcover of canvas over hard board.  Yellowed pages smelled well, old, kind of in an acrid, woodsy manner, some almost a perfume, some like a box that grandma kept her scarves in, and some really wonderful ones that smelled like ironed cotton.  Newer books were fresh and sharp, adding an often crisp chemical smell mixed with the glue used to bind the cover to the folios.  

But you can hold a book, carry it and read it without plugging it in or having to recharge the thing at night.  You can hug it like a teddy till Nana pries it away after sleep comes, or you can revisit phrases again and again, and explore the depths of meaning and landscape.  You can turn the pages and hear the gentle flip of paper against your fingers, paper that will be there for centuries long past any cyberattack or viruses or war that stops energy production.  Pass them down to the youngsters, heaven knows a hardcover book is almost a rarity, and who will know the pleasure of propping one up on a chest while reading on a blanket under a summer tree?

Sleep comes easier with a bedtime story or song, slowing us down and readying our senses for the bridge into dreamland.  Oh, me?  Yes, there is a pile of books next to the bed, a few by Salvador Nutjob Admirable Dali.  Reading has become a guilty occupation, competing with all the college text I am required to get through, with all the paperwork attached to my job.  It will change soon, for nothing ever stays the same.  

Be well, be happy, be thankful you can read.  Google "global literacy statistics" to get an idea of which countries teach their people to read, and which do not.   It is not a good surprise.  The time change forward happens in a few hours, causing us Americans to lose an hour of sleep.  Tomorrow's Sunday funnies and Prince Valiant may be read with one eyelid propped open.  In the meantime, dream of books, of stories, of Aladdin cramming his shirt full of rubies and diamonds, of Heidi running with the goats, of eating breadfruit on an island, shipwrecked in the sea.  So you do.  Sleep as a child then, safe and loved.