Being A Book Person

There are so many words to describe us: bookworm, scholar, intellectual, and my favorite, bibliophile. (I promise it is not my favorite because it so closely resembles the word “pedophile”.)

It is a person who finds warmth and solidarity between the covers of a book; someone who writes, on paper, or in their mind, or on a blog for the whole world to see. Someone who, after a harsh and annoying day at work just dreams of coming home, sitting down, and losing himself or herself for just a few moments in a world where they don’t have to buy a plane ticket to experience a vacation from their everyday life.

What does it mean, to be one of these “Book People”?

It means going into a library, and wandering the aisles of every section, noticing titles that you hope to read eventually, and realizing that there isn’t enough time in twelve lifetimes to read all the books you want.

It means entering a bookstore, and touching every book you’ve read, whispering the title to yourself as if saying a prayer, and generally looking like a schizophrenic lunatic.

It means running up town to buy a dish sponge, and then deciding to check out the newly-opened antique store, and, when the owner begins asking how your day goes, and how you like your antiques, you somehow get on the subject of books, and how just the smell of them amazes you, and before long you understand you’re talking to another Book Person, not a stranger at all. Three hours later, you realize the dishes have been sitting at home in no-longer hot dish water, and that the sponge you went up to town to get has brought two Book People together.

Non-Book People just don’t get it.