I balance books precariously, pile them high on my bedside table: fiction, memoir, children's stories, volumes of poetry, professional reading all stacked up. Too many books, no matter how many shelves my mother or husband build. I've tried and rejected the Kindle, the Nook, other electronic options. I prefer the smell of pages, the weight of a book in my lap, the art of a cover, the scent of bookstores and ink and a certain amount of dust and imagining. Ideally, there's a light shining over my left shoulder and no one who requires my immediate attention. For years, I felt compelled to finish any book I started; now, I'm less rigid. If I hate a story after 100 pages, I stop. And I often have two or three books going at once, shifting texts as my mood changes. I'm a fast reader--sometimes too fast, forcing myself to slow down to make a story last. For me, reading is like indulging in a box of chocolates all alone! Recently, I attended a wedding in the rare book room of The Strand--it was glorious.
First came Richard Scarry's tiny rabbit huddled under a mushroom in a rainstorm, my mother's Brownie books from the 30's; fairy tales--lots and lots of fairy tales--and myths. And elves and fairies galore. Fun with Dick and Jane and golden-haired Sally with Puff, the kitten. and Nancy Nurse and The New Baby and other Little Golden Books. A little later in childhood: Now We are Six and House at Pooh Corner, the red hardback with the Ernest Shepard illustrations, my mother perched on the side of my bed, changing voices--Eyore, Rabbit, Piglet, Pooh, Kanga, Owl. As she bent to kiss me, I wished always for another chapter. Next: Our Island Story in Daddy's lap in the wing chair in the living room. Thrilling to Boadicea and the murder of the little princes in the Tower, I thrilled at the illustrations. My father gave me my own copy some years before he died. Opening it, my girlhood swims up, my love of all things British, the companionable discovery and rediscovery of stories.
I cannot remember not knowing how to read, not having books as my hobby, my passion. Reading was my super-power, my way of escaping in plain view. I read outside under evergreen boughs that made a little shelter. I crawled inside several huge blooming azalea bushes in my grandmother's garden, the pages of my book tinted pink in the glow of the petals.
In Lower School, I blew through the colored dot readers at school, confident about reading aloud: "Pick me, pick me," my small self yearned. There was much about which I did not feel confident--math facts; eczema, which rendered my hands itchy and sore; running relays in gym, which inevitably brought on asthma. But reading was my super power. I read stories aloud in my head, acting them out with my dolls and animals. I read in bed, propped up on a boyfriend pillow after bad asthma attacks. I would read until my heart stopped hammering--101 Dalmations, reading long after I was supposed to sleep again, reading until grey began to light the sky. I loved sequels, loved series. A house full of books and I was allowed to gorge on all of them without limits. Piles of old National Geographic magazines, invitations to other cultures, wild worlds. Along the way every classic--The Saturdays, Gone Away Lake and Return to Goneaway, Five Little Peppers, All of a Kind Family, all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, lent to my by my Aunt Peggy, all the Louisa May Alcott books, all the Cherry Ames mysteries, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess--I didn't care for Little Lord Fauntleroy. E.B White, of course. The Patty Fairfield series--she was a wealthy young woman in pre WWI Manhattan. I found the entire set--minus a few volumes--in a cardboard carton at the Church of the Redeemer book sale--and I devoured them--a sort of Downton Abbey American style written by the syndicate Carolyn Wells. I loved rummage sales--who knew the books I might discover? I was an indiscriminate gobbler-- Maida's Little House series. All of Rumer Godden. To Kill a Mockingbird, Christy, The Chalet School Books, E. Nesbit, Shakespeare plays. Roller Skates. A Ring of Bright of Water. Misty and all the other pony books. National Velvet, The Incredible Journey.The Wind in the Willows. People, dogs, creatures. A Wrinkle in Time--then all the L'Engle books. Theatre Shoes and all the Noel Streafield stories. No Flying in the House. Miss Bianca. I was a devourer of stories.
After an ingrown toe nail surgery--4th grade, perhaps--my reward was a visit to The Country Bookshop in the middle of the morning. For being brave, I was allowed to choose two hardbacks--The Stories of the Ballet--in a place of honor today on a shelf in the family room--and what else? I don't remember, but I do recall the coiffed saleslady in a tweed suit, exclaiming, "My heavens. This child has read everything!" I felt proud. Each summer, Mom took me to the Ardmore Paperback Bookstore to choose as many titles as I hadn't read from the summer reading list--Dell Yearlings. Even then I read both below my age group and above, insatiable, happiest with a book.
Miss Barlow, our librarian in Middle School, understood and fed my voracious appetite for stories. She had been evacuated from London during the blitz to cousins who had a farm near where we went in the summer, Eagles Mere. She remained in Philadelphia, growing up in the family of the woman Benedict Arnold married--Peggy Shippen. Her own story was as intoxicating as the stories I read. It was she who introduced me to the Green Knowe books, encouraged my obsession with historical novels--Anya, a novel about Catherine de Medici, whose title is lost. She asked me to preview new fiction to decide whether or not we should purchase the book for the library. I was allowed to read A, Mine Name is Alice before anyone else. Reading bolstered my sense of self--along the way, I gained vocabulary, a love of language, an intuitive sense of how to put together a sentence, a love of sensory detail, empathy. Libraries have always felt akin to cathedrals--sacred, mysterious, hushed and lovely.
Dickens. The Brontes. Rebecca. Gone With the Wind under the covers with a flashlight...Anne of Green Gables and all the Anne Shirley books, lent to me by Aunt Rita, our summer next door neighbor. I read through visits to obscure relatives, during the drive to our summer-house in Eagles Mere, at the table--when no one noticed. I finished my homework in order to read again.
As a high school English teacher, I regret that my girls say they have too much homework to read for pleasure. I can't imagine my own life without the comfort I find in reading. My addiction to stories didn't diminish as I aged. I almost forgot to study for exams in college one semester, so absorbed in The Far Pavilions that Edith, my roommate, had to hide it from me. As a nursing mother, I loved the luxury of reading with a baby nestled in one arm. I think I may have been the only person to check out first run fiction form the 92nd St. Y reading room. I'd read a review in the Sunday NYT and find the book on the shelf on Tuesday afternoon when I dropped my daughters for their dance classes. I'd tote home as many books as I could carry, finding time to read in the spaces in between. In the dim light of my daughters' bedroom, I relished revisiting books I'd loved, reading them aloud--my old Dell Yearlings dusted off. The Saturdays--all four books--recently captivated my son and me--how beautifully Elizabeth Enright evoked a family's life. There was so much I had forgotten, much I remembered--details would swim up unexpectedly. Before I turned the page, I recalled what would happen next. The secret passage, Mark coming to live with the Melendys; the clues the older children left for Oliver and Randy, the carnival!
Reading is, for me, the ultimate form of relaxation. I open a new book filled with expectation, longing. Sometimes, when I get home from school, I sneak a book into the bathroom with me just to check on characters I won't get to spend time with until the dinner dishes are washed, my son is sleeping, and my preparation for the next day are finished. When I need to stop in an exciting place, my mind wanders back to its characters--will Maisie Dobbs find the right man in Germany in the latest volume of her series; will Helen MacDonald's grief ease as her bond with her hawk grows? I imagine characters living their lives within the pages, freezing as I close the covers, re-animating when I open up the book again. Occasionally, I think about all the stories I've read, all the characters I know colliding, plots, places, sentences--a lively chaotic jumble, like a card catalogue come to life spilled out in my head.
Recently, I discovered a new bookstore near me--Loganberry--a gorgeous rambling labyrinth with a splendid mixture of old and new books. If I go missing, search for me there. I'll be opening books, scanning the first page, running my finger along the binding, waiting to be beckoned, to share adventures, to relish sentences. I'll be crouched, losing track of the time, next to a stack of possibilities.