leafing through

i just this morning finished a book i loved loved loved. i can't stop thinking about it and telling people how great it is. i'll no doubt blog about it soon enough. (the book is a grace disguised by jerry sittser. but that's not really what this post is about.)

as i read the book, i found myself noting pages that contained bits i loved. i couldn't be bothered to slow down enough to copy down the passages, which is problematic, since the book is borrowed and i'll return it to its owner soon. oh, that i had slowed down in reading so many books whose delightful passages i've needed to return! i found myself wanting to absorb this book somehow; i don't want to copy down these bits that touch me so deeply, such that i have to return to some journal to read them again, but i want them to be in me. if only i had a better memory like some people i know who simply contain so many wonderful lines from wonderful books, i found myself thinking.

and then i started thinking of all those books i have loved and lost for not having absorbed them somehow, for not having slowed down to write down--me? not slow down to write?--the things i loved of them. and i realized i love a lot of books.

in fact, i think i can probably count on one hand the books i have read that i haven't loved.

which is not because all the books i read are one kind of book that is the kind i happen to particularly love. i love this book that i finished this morning because its exploration of "how the soul grows through loss," as the subtitle reads, is so familiar and so encouraging. i love a murder mystery or a legal thriller because of a compelling story, like a movie (and if you know me, you know i don't like movies) in my head for my time on the beach or the plane. i love a memoir of a life lived elsewhere in else-times for the stretch it gives my mind to experience someone else's experience from here in my little, little world. i love a something-or-other, whatever it is about, made of beautiful words and sentences and paragraphs simply for the beauty of it, like a painting (and if you know me, you know i'm really not into art). i love a children's book for the delight of the author in it, for the delight of a child in it. i love a play--to read that is (though if you know me, you know that one semester upon a time i lived a dream life in london filled with live theater, too)--for the imagination it takes to make it happen, as it were, in its sparsity on the page. i love a short story for that sparsity, too, for the amazing gift of the author contained in an itty bitty little story.

as i said, i've barely ever met a book i didn't love.

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i don't write in books. ever. i don't turn down corners or break bindings. i love a new book, all crisp and fresh and not yet crinkled or spilled on or finger-smudged. i want it to stay that way to share with others, too, unspoiled by my reading. i have no place leaving my mark on someone else's thoughts, i don't think. yes, i want a book to be just fresh from the author, unspoiled by others' thoughts or thumbings, and i want to give the gift of such books to others, too, even if i have already read them myself. i want a book to seem just fresh from the author when i pass it on to you, without my thoughts or thumbings intruding on your conversation with the author.

(no, i don't think i'll ever own a kindle or a nook. i don't think so. i like my books with pages, thankyouverymuch.)

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it takes some chutzpah to write a book. (and no, i can't define that for you. neither can i define schmatta or meshugina or farblondzet or fachadick, but i'll continue to use them...and yes, i did have to look up the spelling of those last few. and no, they're not pronounced like they look, at least not in my family).

ahem.

chutzpah, as i was saying. people have told me often enough these past few years that i should write a book, and heaven knows i've wanted to since i was a kid. it has even been prophesied of me that i will "birth" a book (i kid you not, and i care not, either, what you think of prophecy: i'm known to be a doubter in general, but not when it comes to this person, who hears from God, i have no doubt, and whom i trust implicitly). and i've got the itch. but it takes chutzpah to even say that here, for just the handful of you who read this thing--ha!--and who are all probably among those who have told me i should write a book anyhow. even to say to you i'd like to do this takes more chutzpah than i have suspected i could muster.

but there. i've said it. i've got words in me, and i like them. i like to write them down, and i like to share them. i want other people's books' words in me, no doubt, but i'm also learning something about the words of my own that i have in me.

thumb and think away.