Going to the Library

I really, really love libraries. Maybe it's just that I really, really love books, but it's also the quiet and calm atmosphere, the endless choices, and the sense that there are so many adventures you could go on, with only the flip of a page. Choose a door and go through it, and experience the world that lies beyond. Or take a few doors home with you and spend a little infinity inside of each of them.

I just got back from the library after my violin lesson, which is right across the street, and pretty much brought back a stack of books that won't really make me smarter or make me think, but books that will keep me entertained for the next few days. Because they teach you about life and are pretty funny, I got an Alice McKinley book, one from her senior year, and a few Babysitters Club books because now I'm older than the girls in those and I can look at them from a different perspective. The prize of this trip were the two John Green books, Looking For Alaska and Paper Towns. I loved The Fault In Our Stars so much, and I've heard great things about these mature but wonderful books, so this will be an interesting next couple of days.

The thing that I've noticed about rereading books over and over again is that you are never lonely. About 4/5 of the books that I mentioned above are ones that I've read before, and I either want to refresh my memory or take the trip back into that world and see what I gain from it this time. I think that's a great way to describe books. Each time you read one, you absorb the words and fall into a new reality, where you are the main character, and feel pain when he or she does, laugh along with the dialogue, and get so wrapped up that you're distrought when it's over. I read To Kill A Mockingbird this year, and plan to read it every year that I can for the rest of my life, to see what else I can learn from the text.

One great example would be Harry Potter. It may sound silly, but I will never feel lonely if I have a Harry Potter book with me. If I'm alone someplace, like at an orchestra rehearsal with a bunch of elderly adults talking about their grandchildren with each other, all I have to do is open up the book and suddenly I'm home. I've read those books hundreds of times, fallen into those worlds on so many occasions, that the words just become part of me after a while, and even though I know what's going to  happen next, they're familiar, and that's comforting in a strange but happy little way.


Just being in a library makes me want to just sit there and read forever. It's so quiet, with only little rustlings and keyboard tapping, and the occasional beep of the scanner, that all time just goes away, and you're lost in a whole new dimension, with endless possibilities stretched out in front of you, aisles and aisles of new opportunities and information waiting to be soaked up. Every time I read a book, I learn something new, and feel like a better person. Every time I write, or try to write, a book, I feel like a better person. Words are the most powerful tools that we can have, and the library is full of them.

 

Every book ever written in the English language is just different combination of 26 letters.