Holds and Holding

I feel like reading for an entire weekend. I feel like I should take a long flight just for some good book time. I placed too many books on hold at the library -- no one can read six novels in three weeks and work. Even though I know I will inevitably have to return the book and then check it out again, I don't mind. I cannot wait for them to arrive. Some haven't even been published but they sound fascinating. I have a memoir, a historical fiction, a British mystery, a story about a mental institution, stories about the south, and more.

There is something about the weight of a book in your hand. When you read in bed you get a crick in your neck from trying to hold the book as little as possible and still be able to see the words. When you read in the bathtub the corners of the pages get pruney and crisp. Your purse is always bulging with a book, ready to be taken out while waiting in line, waiting to pick up your kids, bored at a party. There is always the anticipation of turning the page in the midst of action. The anticipation of opening a brand new book. The final closing after reading something beautiful.

When I get my new iPhone 4 (!!) I will have access to iBooks -- but will I use it? Any book that I bought in e-version that I liked would just have to be repurchased in physical form for my library. I suppose e-books would be all right for a just-okay novel, but you have to pay for it, and if that's the case you may as well partake in the richness that is the library. Ah, the library. We have a complicated relationship -- mostly because I go through bouts where I am furious at them for losing items I return, only to find them sitting on my bookshelf. (In my defense, we had just moved and they were at the very tippy top of the bookshelf completely out of sight.) But mostly we are constant lovers. For no other place in the world offers up the entire, or very near to entire, collection of literature. At no cost. Unless you turn the items in late, and even then it's a pittance, pennies on the day. And all for the joy of reading and reading to your heart's content.