Oh how I wish... I wish I could read as easily as so many do! If I walked into Dr. Cornel West's office space and seen the books from floor to ceiling the angst in my chest, the anxiety -- and yes, intimidation of scholarly-esque books would show in beads of sweat starting to accumulate on my forehead. I read so slowly. Even today. I don't have dyslexia or anything like that, I just...read slowly. But I read. I do. Because it is magical. It all consuming and although a bit overwhelming for me - also so very satisfying when I'm done! I have only read one book, in one sitting - over a few days and that was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It's not my favorite book or anything (though a very good book!), but it's the one I remember reading "quickly" in "Carmen terms". Thank you for explaining "tsundoku" - mounds of guilt just disappeared from my piles of books I know I will read... even if slowly someday. THAT just made me smile!
Thanks for this term, tsundoku. My entire life with books has resembled this method: stacking books everywhere, and buying books to read later. I've even found myself stacking library books, especially when late fees have been waived. Enjoyed this read.
..........a few years ago, I began creating a book list on Amazon of books that I wanted to purchase - photographers, fashion, history. Each person that did a webinar during the time of change, I put them on the list. As people passed away, I pulled their names and sought their collections. As the memoirs and autobiographies got published (Viola, Michelle, Billy, Andre) I listed them -
When the winds of change happened and masks were worn less, I remembered that fabulous place in my neighborhood called (wait for it) the LIBRARY (lol) - I began ordering online like it was Instacart. I'd walk over and gather a cart full of books depending on the season. Summer brings poetry and American history of the 1800s. Fall brings studies on blues music and plays. Winter takes me to the memoirs of Jan Yoor and his time with the Gypsies or the great Barbara Chase Riboud and her travels throughout Europe. My Amazon list slowly dissolved and my now curated list of MUST HAVE books gets purchased at local booksellers in my area!
Your writing today speaks volumes and reminds us all how precious it is to fully understand the power and healing properties of books! Please read that book and let us know what it looks (and feels) like :)
(File this under 'the wonder of RE-reading':
My adult daughter is going back to Parable of the Sower. She asked me "did you know that Parable of the Sower is based on something in the Bible?" You see, she had just thought, you know, 'cool name, science fiction book' I eagerly shared "yes - it's that story of the seeds being sown in different environments and their results". We both marveled that this new understanding will give her a deeper/richer perspective on Octavia Butler's prophetic book. It is now an entirely NEW book for us both!)
The same! As a daughter of educators—a family of educators—I began reading at a very young age. I remember my joy and sense of accomplishment when I finished one of my father’s old textbooks...comprehending every word. And, I too, have many books that are unread; I’ll get to them. But a new book brings joy, a feeling of possibilities with new friends, an expansion of horizons and understanding. ☺️
Books have been my lifeline, since I was very young in the 60’s. I could only imagine what life would be without them. Books are so precious and important to me.
I come from a family of educators and grew up on the beaches of the gulf coast in Mobile-just a stone’s throw from Moss Point. In my grandparents’ home there were mini libraries throughout the home. In college I began purchasing and collecting books to build the library that would be in my home one day. My daughter has token hold of that and is doing the same.
I, too, appreciate this lovely reminiscence and the tribute to books and reading. I have also loved books and reading all my life.
Growing up in a little waterfront town along the Miles River in Maryland, I remember the joy of heading out to the bookmobile when it came to town. After my family moved to Dover, Delaware when I was 10, I could walk to the library whenever I wanted! Heaven!
Oh, me too! Books have been my happy place. My safe place. And also enlightening and expanding place! Every time I read James Baldwin’s essay about the stolen sheet— and the meaning of the laughter at the end— my heart breaks in compassion for all of us flawed humans and I am a little wiser, sadder, and my heart is stronger. Thank you for this essay!
Thank for this beautiful piece, it takes me back 50 years or more . This is my response:-
The Joys of Reading
When I arrived in Britain from Ghana in 1974, I was eleven years old and very lonely.
Migration is often told as an adult story. It is described in terms of work, opportunity, sacrifice, and survival. But for a child the experience is far simpler and more unsettling. It is the quiet shock of dislocation. New streets. New voices. A sky that seemed permanently grey. The sudden absence of everything that once felt natural and familiar.
What saved me during those early years was reading.
One of the first things my mother did after we arrived in London was take my sister and me to the local library. We registered almost immediately. At the time it seemed like a small, ordinary errand. Looking back now, I understand that it was one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me.
Each week I would borrow four books.
And each week I returned them.
Four books became a rhythm. A discipline. A promise that the world was larger than the narrow circle of loneliness that sometimes surrounded me.
Later our family moved from London to Stevenage. Where we lived there was no nearby library, at least not one within easy reach. For a moment I feared that the door that reading had opened for me had quietly closed again.
But the town had another solution.
Every Wednesday a trailer arrived filled with books. A mobile library. Once again we registered, and the ritual continued. By then I was twelve, perhaps thirteen, and I resumed the same pattern: four books every week.
Those books carried me everywhere.
Science fiction transported me to distant worlds and imagined futures. Literature opened the complexity of human lives. Stories stretched my imagination far beyond the narrow geography of a migrant childhood.
I remember reading Dune when I was about thirteen. At the time it was simply an extraordinary adventure. Only later did I begin to understand the deeper currents beneath it: questions of power, empire, religion, ecology and politics.
The same revelation slowly unfolded with other works I encountered over time, including the ancient epics of Homer. What first appeared as distant stories from a vanished world gradually revealed themselves to be something else entirely. Beneath their mythic surface lay enduring reflections on pride, ambition, honour, conflict and the fragile order of societies.
Reading was not merely entertainment.
It was liberation.
Books carried me to places my imagination would never otherwise have reached. They allowed me to inhabit worlds larger, stranger and more complex than the one I had suddenly found myself living in.
More importantly, they gave me a life of the mind.
For a child who felt alone in a new country, that life became a refuge, a teacher, and eventually a calling.
Those early reading expeditions did something I could not have understood at the time. They slowly shaped the person I would become. What began as escape gradually became education, and that education eventually led me to writing.
Today I find myself continually astonished by the enduring power of the books that first captured my imagination. The struggles of pride, power and ambition that animate Homer’s Iliad are not confined to the distant past. They continue to echo in our own age, shaping nations, conflicts and the ambitions of leaders.
That a poem composed nearly three thousand years ago can still illuminate the conduct of the modern world remains one of the greatest revelations reading has given me.
Looking back now, I understand that my parents could not have offered a greater gift than that simple weekly habit: walking to the library, choosing four books, and returning a week later for four more.
Reading did more than rescue a lonely child.
It opened the world.
And it set me, quietly and unexpectedly, on the long journey toward becoming a writer.
Oh how I wish... I wish I could read as easily as so many do! If I walked into Dr. Cornel West's office space and seen the books from floor to ceiling the angst in my chest, the anxiety -- and yes, intimidation of scholarly-esque books would show in beads of sweat starting to accumulate on my forehead. I read so slowly. Even today. I don't have dyslexia or anything like that, I just...read slowly. But I read. I do. Because it is magical. It all consuming and although a bit overwhelming for me - also so very satisfying when I'm done! I have only read one book, in one sitting - over a few days and that was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It's not my favorite book or anything (though a very good book!), but it's the one I remember reading "quickly" in "Carmen terms". Thank you for explaining "tsundoku" - mounds of guilt just disappeared from my piles of books I know I will read... even if slowly someday. THAT just made me smile!
Thanks for this term, tsundoku. My entire life with books has resembled this method: stacking books everywhere, and buying books to read later. I've even found myself stacking library books, especially when late fees have been waived. Enjoyed this read.
..........a few years ago, I began creating a book list on Amazon of books that I wanted to purchase - photographers, fashion, history. Each person that did a webinar during the time of change, I put them on the list. As people passed away, I pulled their names and sought their collections. As the memoirs and autobiographies got published (Viola, Michelle, Billy, Andre) I listed them -
When the winds of change happened and masks were worn less, I remembered that fabulous place in my neighborhood called (wait for it) the LIBRARY (lol) - I began ordering online like it was Instacart. I'd walk over and gather a cart full of books depending on the season. Summer brings poetry and American history of the 1800s. Fall brings studies on blues music and plays. Winter takes me to the memoirs of Jan Yoor and his time with the Gypsies or the great Barbara Chase Riboud and her travels throughout Europe. My Amazon list slowly dissolved and my now curated list of MUST HAVE books gets purchased at local booksellers in my area!
Your writing today speaks volumes and reminds us all how precious it is to fully understand the power and healing properties of books! Please read that book and let us know what it looks (and feels) like :)
(File this under 'the wonder of RE-reading':
My adult daughter is going back to Parable of the Sower. She asked me "did you know that Parable of the Sower is based on something in the Bible?" You see, she had just thought, you know, 'cool name, science fiction book' I eagerly shared "yes - it's that story of the seeds being sown in different environments and their results". We both marveled that this new understanding will give her a deeper/richer perspective on Octavia Butler's prophetic book. It is now an entirely NEW book for us both!)
Thanks for such a heartfelt post! I Love Books! 📚 You are not alone!
I, too, quite enjoyed Shannara. I just wish I could finish all my books. Maybe if I quit buying? Nah.
I practice tsundoku! I also have been a reader since childhood and am a retired academic librarian. My TBR piles are al around my apartment! 📚📚📚
Yes!!
The same! As a daughter of educators—a family of educators—I began reading at a very young age. I remember my joy and sense of accomplishment when I finished one of my father’s old textbooks...comprehending every word. And, I too, have many books that are unread; I’ll get to them. But a new book brings joy, a feeling of possibilities with new friends, an expansion of horizons and understanding. ☺️
Books have been my lifeline, since I was very young in the 60’s. I could only imagine what life would be without them. Books are so precious and important to me.
Same!! As is my daughter.
I come from a family of educators and grew up on the beaches of the gulf coast in Mobile-just a stone’s throw from Moss Point. In my grandparents’ home there were mini libraries throughout the home. In college I began purchasing and collecting books to build the library that would be in my home one day. My daughter has token hold of that and is doing the same.
I, too, appreciate this lovely reminiscence and the tribute to books and reading. I have also loved books and reading all my life.
Growing up in a little waterfront town along the Miles River in Maryland, I remember the joy of heading out to the bookmobile when it came to town. After my family moved to Dover, Delaware when I was 10, I could walk to the library whenever I wanted! Heaven!
Such gorgeous writing. Intoxicating!
Oh, me too! Books have been my happy place. My safe place. And also enlightening and expanding place! Every time I read James Baldwin’s essay about the stolen sheet— and the meaning of the laughter at the end— my heart breaks in compassion for all of us flawed humans and I am a little wiser, sadder, and my heart is stronger. Thank you for this essay!
Thank for this beautiful piece, it takes me back 50 years or more . This is my response:-
The Joys of Reading
When I arrived in Britain from Ghana in 1974, I was eleven years old and very lonely.
Migration is often told as an adult story. It is described in terms of work, opportunity, sacrifice, and survival. But for a child the experience is far simpler and more unsettling. It is the quiet shock of dislocation. New streets. New voices. A sky that seemed permanently grey. The sudden absence of everything that once felt natural and familiar.
What saved me during those early years was reading.
One of the first things my mother did after we arrived in London was take my sister and me to the local library. We registered almost immediately. At the time it seemed like a small, ordinary errand. Looking back now, I understand that it was one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me.
Each week I would borrow four books.
And each week I returned them.
Four books became a rhythm. A discipline. A promise that the world was larger than the narrow circle of loneliness that sometimes surrounded me.
Later our family moved from London to Stevenage. Where we lived there was no nearby library, at least not one within easy reach. For a moment I feared that the door that reading had opened for me had quietly closed again.
But the town had another solution.
Every Wednesday a trailer arrived filled with books. A mobile library. Once again we registered, and the ritual continued. By then I was twelve, perhaps thirteen, and I resumed the same pattern: four books every week.
Those books carried me everywhere.
Science fiction transported me to distant worlds and imagined futures. Literature opened the complexity of human lives. Stories stretched my imagination far beyond the narrow geography of a migrant childhood.
I remember reading Dune when I was about thirteen. At the time it was simply an extraordinary adventure. Only later did I begin to understand the deeper currents beneath it: questions of power, empire, religion, ecology and politics.
The same revelation slowly unfolded with other works I encountered over time, including the ancient epics of Homer. What first appeared as distant stories from a vanished world gradually revealed themselves to be something else entirely. Beneath their mythic surface lay enduring reflections on pride, ambition, honour, conflict and the fragile order of societies.
Reading was not merely entertainment.
It was liberation.
Books carried me to places my imagination would never otherwise have reached. They allowed me to inhabit worlds larger, stranger and more complex than the one I had suddenly found myself living in.
More importantly, they gave me a life of the mind.
For a child who felt alone in a new country, that life became a refuge, a teacher, and eventually a calling.
Those early reading expeditions did something I could not have understood at the time. They slowly shaped the person I would become. What began as escape gradually became education, and that education eventually led me to writing.
Today I find myself continually astonished by the enduring power of the books that first captured my imagination. The struggles of pride, power and ambition that animate Homer’s Iliad are not confined to the distant past. They continue to echo in our own age, shaping nations, conflicts and the ambitions of leaders.
That a poem composed nearly three thousand years ago can still illuminate the conduct of the modern world remains one of the greatest revelations reading has given me.
Looking back now, I understand that my parents could not have offered a greater gift than that simple weekly habit: walking to the library, choosing four books, and returning a week later for four more.
Reading did more than rescue a lonely child.
It opened the world.
And it set me, quietly and unexpectedly, on the long journey toward becoming a writer.
Beautifully said!!!
I knew we were soulmates. Now, I understand why. I love books! Thank you for this essay that affirms that I am not alone in my hoarding of them. 🤣