“Book Happy”

As a child, I was entranced by my grandfather’s study.  Grandpa and Grandma lived on a quiet leafy street in a big brown house that always smelled warm and cozy and I felt embraced by it the moment I entered.  The study was a very small room.  There were bookcases on every wall and the desk was overflowing with papers and more books.  There were even stacks of books on the floor.  Other than the public library, it was more books in one place than I’d ever seen.

There was just enough room to turn around in and pivot to look at the shelves.  I was allowed to go in and just look which I did.  I couldn’t have been more than eight at the time and was already an avid reader.  These were books mostly about literature (Grandpa being a professor at the university) and while I wasn’t ready to read them, I liked gazing at the spines and pulling out an occasional volume here and there to inspect it.  The room smelled of paper and ink—slightly dusty—and I would spend long moments just contemplating the scene.  As I grew older, I spent more time here and would even read a few pages or an introduction.  Struck by all these books which Grandpa obviously cherished, I dubbed him “book happy.”

When I was a teenager, my grandparents moved to a split level house on the other side of their town.  With its new house fresh paint smell, it was spacious and modern and slightly standoffish, but Grandpa’s study on the ground floor was expansive—two to three times the size of the old one.  Here too there were bookcases lining the walls, a large desk, and the ever present stacks of books and papers on every surface, floor included.  This room was lighter and brighter than his old study, and I passed the time here as well, always welcomed into his lair by my grandfather.

Today, I have my own small study—not as many bookcases as Grandpa had, but still a wall of shelves including the New York edition of the works of Henry James, given to me by him and one of my treasures.  I do own a Kindle Paperwhite and I do appreciate the convenience of having many books on it when I travel, but there is a sameness to books read on a device. They all look alike.  At heart, I’m a lover of paper books and an acquisitive one at that.  I gave away hundreds of books before moving, but will continue to buy books going forward.  I like the feel of a book, that tactile experience, and I derive visual pleasure from the design and color of book jackets and the variety of fonts on the page.  I think it’s fair to say I’m “book happy” too.

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Movie of the Week:  I can’t recall if I ever walked out of a movie before, but this week I did. Given all the press “Birdman” was getting, we decided we should go see it.  Even beforehand, I didn’t particularly care for the premise.  I suffered through not quite an hour before I suggested we leave. Fortunately, my husband was in agreement.  I didn’t like any of the characters, thought the language was overly vulgar, and found the narrow corridors of the film’s setting dull and tedious.  I couldn’t take a second hour.  A woman I overheard the week before said she found the movie “weird,” but she didn’t say “don’t go to it.”  Anyway, not a winner for me.