Editorials

By: Sarah Benjamin

I was on winter break in Florida at my parent's house. I had only one thing on my mind: read my new book that I had just bought. Finally! A book that I wanted to read, not for school but for me. It was a long awaited new book by my all-time favorite author, Margaret Atwood, prodigiously titled The Year of the Flood. Instead, I found myself one week later, relaxed and content, but without Atwood’s books having even been cracked open. Why, might you ask? Well, as soon as I walked in to my old bedroom I was side-tracked by the old bookshelf in the corner. The books that I had painstakingly scrounged up money to buy, found in thrift stores and tag sales, were still held warmly on the shelves. I experienced an overwhelming sensation joy of seeing them again mixed with an equally overwhelming feeling of guilt for having abandoned them in the first place. The old justification for leaving them was repeating in my head: I can only take a few of you with me. It's not you, It's me! I don't have room in my luggage! I'll come back for you!

As if books have feelings.

So to prove that I really did come back for them, I spent most of my vacation eagerly re-reading them. Spinners, Zel, Ella Enchanted, and then a few books by Robin McKinley, and Anne McCaffrey. Re-reading a book is like the comfort of an old friend. Sure, I know what happens and how it ends, but that lets me enjoy the novels in a new, more relaxing way. I can unashamedly turn to favorite parts. I can catch the intricacies of plot and character motives. I don't have to stay up to the wee hours of the morning because I can't put a book down. I can have a contended rest with the promise of more good reading bright-and-early the next day.

You may not have seen an old friend in a while, but when you meet for a coffee, suddenly you are laughing together as if you just talked yesterday. You relive old memories and begin to make new ones. An old friend can still surprise you sometimes, with a random letter in the mail, or a call on your birthday. A book’s meaning can change and age over the years, too. How you read and absorb a book years after your first reading can be a litmus test to how you may have changed over the years. But while you may have changed drastically since you read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child, the words on the page are the same as you left them, and that can be reassuring. A new reading of an old book can leave you with a feeling of simultaneous comfort, at their constancy, and surprise, at the details you may have missed.

So yeah, like old friends, maybe books do have feelings. Or maybe I just have feelings for books. Very strong ones, indeed.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a bunch of new friends; ones that will someday have the honor of being placed gently on a bookshelf to be re-discovered on some rainy day. I’m pretty sure that when that rainy day comes, I’ll go through the whole cycle of joy, guilt, and finally, discovery all over again. I hope they feel the same. I am pretty sure they do.

Tell me a story about when you re-discovered a book all over again. Contact me at sbenjamin496@yahoo.com.