I am moving house at the moment. Not literally, I hasten to add. I am not typing this from a laptop balanced on my knee somewhere on the M1. I am moving in a few days and I type this surrounded by boxes and bags and the remains of Things Which Should Not Be Moved And Really Should Go To The Tip For The Love Of God.
And I am surrounded, quite palpably, by the absence of my books.
It makes me twitchy this space-without-things, this new canvas of my flat where the type of the keyboard echoes and the TV seems too loud. It makes me twitchy because books are the weft of my life in so many ways, they are the binding between the cracks and they are the rock that I swim too when I am drowning and need something to hold on to.
I like books. Can you tell? I like what they mean, I like what they are, I like that the very concept of a book exists – stop for a moment and consider how wondrous that is. That we, as a people, decided to bind and create and collect our stories, our currency as people, our history and our culture, and we realised that was important enough that it needed to be kept. That it needed to be valued.
And that it needed to be.
And so, this is where I tell you of my panicked comment to an estate agent: “What sort of an area are you looking for?” “Somewhere close to the library?”, and this is where I tell you why that still matters, why that always matters and why that will always matter.
When we visit libraries, when we touch a book, when we sit and listen to mum or dad or gran or grandad read the first page of a new bedtime story, we are doing so much more than the reading of that book. We are reading ourselves in a way, we are engaging in the sharing of stories, and we are binding ourselves to one another.
We are connecting. We are connected. We have a hook into the great weave of our world. We read to hear, to find, to be ourselves. We are when we read. We read when we are. And we read when we are not, when we are lost in the great nothingness. Libraries open doors to other worlds. And to ourselves.
I miss my books. I miss them because they are a part of me. .
Daisy May Johnson 
You say so much better than I can how I feel about books too. My guess is unpacking books will be one of first priorities when you do move — hope you’ve kept out enough of them to tide you over till then…
Unpacking the books is very high on my priority list, how did you guess? 😉
I remember so well my panic when I first moved into a house for a year during college… and the only books I had were textbooks! I had to borrow our second paperback copies of beloved books for my parents, just so I would have books on the shelves and could feel at home, even if I knew I wouldn’t have time to read them.
I hope you move goes very smoothly and that you’re surrounded by your books again soon!
Thank you! And oh, you’ve made me remember the whole “Oh my GOSH what books do I take to university?” moment that I had 🙂
Whenever I go to a house party I’m nosy to see what books the occupant has (and often tempted to nick something I want). What we have around us is, of course, personal and important, but books are far more ornaments – they are dependable things. I loved the importance you put on the local library. Enjoy the unpacking.
I’ve already found my copy of Coram Boy. It has been a very good unpacking 🙂