When I Fall In Love

Today I was in B&N and found myself amongst friends. I was in Seattle when I made acquaintances with The Time Travelers Wife and the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I was stumbling through Sophomore year when I found solace in Asher Lev and The Chosen. I was discovering life outside historical fiction when my mother placed The Nanny Diaries in my hands. I Know this Much is True and Angela's Ashes distracted my solemn heart the year my father passed. Walking the isles as my eyes searched for new arrivals, my heart would leap before my mind could notice that I had read that one. My heart would remember as if it say "Ah dear friend, that time I stayed up with you all night discovering..." Or "How do you do Frank? I'm glad you survived Asher... Morrie, do you remember when you taught me endurance?" Today I realized, from those rich pangs of memory inflicted on my heart, that it is possible to be in love with books. I know, because I am. Maybe it's the magic that I've found in them...

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away, is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. IT is a kind of magic."
-Dianne Setterfield