My Love Affair
. . . with books.
I love books. Seriously. I own way too many. I check out way too many from the library. I probably have as many books as I do clothes and shoes. I have books in 3 boxes in my closet, in two stacks on the shelf in my closet, layered two deep under my TV stand (behind closed doors thank goodness), lined up in a box next to my desk (all my current “school-assigned” books), stacked on the shelf under my desk, and a few spares left by old roommates out in the front room. By and large, those are the books that I own. Then we have the ones I’m borrowing. Those are mostly relegated to the top of the desk (currently coming in at two piles) and the floor. Sorry, but that John Constable book weighs probably 5 pounds and is absolutely too huge to fit anywhere else.
Yesterday I went to the library. To get more books. Because I have to read more books. I have a reading test as part of my graduate experience and it is coming up in about a month… the first Friday of December. (Any guesses on what I’m doing over Thanksgiving this year?) Of the approximately 21 works I have to read I’ve read… not enough. So I hunted down the call numbers to get four more– that professor is nice and has me reading selections from the more dense works of theory. I’m saving the harder stuff for later. Yeah, that makes great sense. Anyways, I also found the electronic copy of a dissertation I needed for another professor’s list, and I had the brilliant idea to check the author’s works cited page to see if I could find any gems. I found six separate titles — I found their call numbers — I wrote them all down on the backside of the paper with the four I needed. These new six are practically fluff compared to the other four, in that they’ll help my thesis research, but I don’t have a deadline for reading them. If it’s not got a time limit attached, I probably shouldn’t read it, right?
So, I went to the library. The BYU library is huge, so I always write down the floor number with the call number to make my journey efficient. That, and I know if I start browsing the shelves at random I’ll walk out with twenty books that I really don’t have time to read. I made my way through the miles of shelves… not that I walked miles to find my books, although they were basically at the furthest possible points from where I walked into the various sections. (It’s okay, I needed some exercise this week. I’ve been horrifically lax since my race last Saturday.) From 1st floor to 5th floor, I diligently followed the front of my list, the side with four books that must be read and remembered and synthesized in the next month. As I walked down from the 5th floor, I paused on the landing for the 4th floor. That’s where the Music/Dance area is at, a series of shelves with which I am intimately acquainted. Almost every (unnecessary) book on the back of my list could be found quickly in that area.
I walked on down the stairs, bypassing the temptation to bring home yet more books. You’d think I’d made it to safety, right? The main floor (3rd floor) is primarily a study area, so there’s practically no risk of picking up an extra book on the fly. Except for the Sampler Collection. The easily-accessible location where popular fiction, old and new, is housed so students can grab and go, so to speak. I don’t indulge in fiction much during the school year, so this area usually holds little draw for me. However, as I walked past the doors I felt like all those happy fiction books were laughing and taunting me!! Come read me, come read me, you know you want to have a good time! Forget responsibilities and have a little fling! Pernicious little fictions trying to tempt me!!
I walked away. I made it out of the library with just the four books I will need to read for next month. I still have about 5 or 6 to check out for the rest of my reading exam list, but hopefully my struggles with bookly temptations will be less extreme by then. And hopefully I will have read some of the books that need to be read! People sometimes joke that Humanities is an easy major because it doesn’t involve math or science or economics or difficult conceptual theories. I would have to disagree. First of all, we do have difficult theories to wrap our brains around… they just related to more philosophical things than how-the-world-works things. And secondly, we have to transport LOADS of information into our brains with stupendous amounts of reading! Have you tried reading 4-5 books at once and keeping them all straight and gaining theoretical and conceptual insights from them (while keeping them all straight)? Try it.
I love books.
3 Comments
Helena · November 5, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Erica, I could have written this post. It's like we are the same person.
brevin+kim · November 5, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Erica, I used to like to read till I read your post…lol…you made my brain hurt!! Miss you girl!
Jake · November 5, 2010 at 10:16 pm
I miss the Sampler.