I am a reader.
While I do enjoy the occasional e-Book, I am an old-school reader…I like actual books. I like the feel of the binding in my hands. I love the smell of the paper. Hard cover or paperback, doesn’t matter, as long as I can hold on to it.
And I can spend hours…literally…in a book store. Just wandering the aisles, seeing what’s new and looking for old favorites. I can clean out just about anything, but I do struggle when I need to clean out my books, because I am one of those people who re-reads the favorites over and over again.
The sad thing is that the rest of my household members are not readers. They really don’t get how I can spend hours with a book and be perfectly content. They measure reading progress by chapter or page number. I don’t measure…I read until I’m done with the story.
As my kids started to need me less and I had free time (free time?) on my hands, I started to look around the community for some way to give back. With my love of books, the Friends of the Library was the first place I went. I love spending time going through the books and, in many cases in the children’s section, reliving old memories, not only mine but my kids’ too.
Sometimes I worry that with all the technological advances, there will come a time where reading – like cursive writing – is no longer a focus. I also worry that booksellers will go the way of the dodo, much like newsprint is said to be slowly dying.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the convenience of checking out the news on my iPad, but when it comes to really losing myself in a story, give me a book with pages to turn.
For me, reading is a fundamental part of my life.
