A Passion for Books in Postcards 4

Crooked bedroom books.

We lived with my grandfather in a middle-aged, Cape Cod house filled with books. Every Christmas mother and Gunny would give me a good book. Every Christmas my Aunt Margurite and uncle Charlie would give Gimpa a good book too. Perhaps I grew up believing books meant love.

Captain Poolie commented, “I love that you know so much about authors and books. I am a Luddite.” I don’t think she is increasingly against books, but I do believe that she doesn’t have any time to read any more. Many people don’t. Nook’s and increasingly, Kindles, fill the space that printed books once held. Everyone is increasingly busy in today’s society…including me. My reading time isn’t spent on my Nook but with a real book in my hand.

I read any printed thing. When I was a kid, I read the cereal boxes before school. Today’s reading menu moves between a seventeenth century history to a modern ghost catcher paperback. If I didn’t do volunteer work with books, I’d go to my job wondering what was happening next in the book I left behind. My wonderful husband puts up with my masses of old paper…and reads one of them on occasion.

How do you all feel about books? Are they still a part of your lives? I’d like to know.

• Himself: CBS Sunday Morning, breakfast, clean up from the change from blue to red in the living room, take a small road trip, and go to a meeting.
• Herself: Ditto, plus dishes and make the bed.
• Reading: Sci-fi today.
• Balance: Hoping the May grey will burn off to sunshine.