Right now, I'm in mourning. I've just finished The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and it's one of those books where I've regretted finishing it, because I'll never again have the pleasure of reading it for the first time. I'm looking at the cover and I know all the secrets now and I wish I didn't. I wish they were still ahead of me.
I didn't read this book, so much as have an affair with it. I started it and quickly realised that it was something very special. And my behaviour altered accordingly. Instead of sitting reading it nicely, with a cup of tea, I became secretive and sly. I've always been the kind of person who's happier doing stuff once the sun has gone down, but this book turned me nocturnal.
For three nights, I didn't even try and pick it up before 2am. Then, when the house was quiet, when the world was quiet, everyone else in bed with lovers, husbands, teddies or dreams, I'd pick it up. I'd sit in bed with chocolate cherry liqueurs and read it. Devour it. Over three nights, I sat in the dark, in The Night Circus. I watched Celia and Marco's battle, knowing how it had to end, willing it not to. I became a rêveur, following the Circus around the world, my metaphorical red scarf floating behind me on a caramel-apple scented breeze. I marvelled at the Wishing Tree, The Ice Garden, The Contortionist.
And now it's over. And I miss it.
The point of this blog isn't to introduce you to my sordid night-time habits, though I assure you I have many. The point is... Well, books.
When I was little, I genuinely thought I was Matilda. Not least helped by the fact my granddad called me Matilda (whether he thought that was my name or was just being funny is, as yet, undetermined). But I was her! I lived in a bookless house for years! My parents saw no value in reading! They found it amusing when I got lost in a book. 'Ah, she's reading,' they'd say, in the same way someone might say 'She doesn't speak English,' or 'She's in a coma,' when I didn't respond to a request. I had a lovely teacher at school and she encouraged me to read AND join the library. I had an evil headmistress whose sole joy in life seemed to involve reducing children to tears.
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| Uncanny, isn't it? |
All the pieces fit. And never, never did a child spend so much time as I did trying to levitate a piece of chalk. No child ever invested so much mental energy into trying to develop telekinetic powers. I'm not going to lie, I still try it now. Sometimes, I'll look at a pen and will it to come to me. And I still reckon, one day, it will happen.
Books are everything. K-Rob once gave me a pen with 'She found her family in a book,' on it (and I bloody well did). SophieSoph gave me a brooch which reads 'She has read too many books and they have addled her brain,' on it (and it's bloody well true). Books bind people in a way that no other form of media can do. Because no other form of media gives you the freedom to create a world that a book does. A book gives you a little detail and then demands that you imagine the rest. It nudges you towards a place where you can let your mind loose with possibilities. To have a book is to have infinite, glorious potential, the potential to step entirely into another place without ever leaving your home. They are waking dreams.
I'm not, by any stretch, some kind of literary voice of authority either. While I'm a prolific reader, I'm not especially discerning. I like fiction. Pure, whimsical, intangible fiction. When I read, I don't want to learn anything other than what it's like to be somewhere else and see through someone else's eyes. It's a form of escape, a break from my own life when it's not appropriate or convenient to take a nap.
My whole life, I've prized books above almost everything else. I had to stop going into charity shops for a while, because seeing the copies of Harry Potter on the shelves made me sad and I'd be compelled to buy them. I couldn't understand who didn't love them enough to keep them.
I worry about people who don't read. That's not to say I judge them, any more than I expect to be judged because of my point-blank refusal to indulge in sports (I don't do sweat). But I worry they're missing out on a part of the world that they could so easily have, if they would open themselves up to it. I think readers dream bigger than most people, because we're exposed to the idea that the impossible is, in fact, eminently possible if you have enough nerve. Because if you can take some words, a few letters, and arrange them in the right way, you can make magic happen. And in that sense, every book is a spell.
The next book I expect to captivate me is Ali Shaw's 'The Man Who Rained'. I'm actually scared of this book, because I loved his first book, 'The Girl With Glass Feet', so much. Probably too much, if I'm honest. I bought a copy for K-Rob for her birthday last year but didn't feel as though I could part with it. She got her own one, in the end.
There is so much pleasure in books. The smell of new pages, the feel of them in your hands. I fold the corners down on mine, sacrilege to some, but to me it feels right. I don't get sad if I spill tea on them, or open them to find my lap suddenly covered in biscuit crumbs. I use my books and it shows and I love them more for it. I like to see them wrinkled, it feels as though we've grown together. I'm leaving my mark on them, in the same way they've left their marks on me.
We're battle-scarred, me and my books and I wouldn't have it any other way.
For the love of all that's good and great in the world, please don't ever stop reading. Because, to bastardise a popular quote, 'to tire of reading, is to tire of life'.
