November 15, 2024
This post is part of my 30in30 challenge, where I write 30 minutes every day for 30 working days. Due to my limited time for this challenge, the content will be only very lightly researched and edited. The idea is to just write. Find my voice, and find the courage to publish. To follow my curiosity wherever it may take me.
I love books.
I love reading.
I love being surrounded by books. There isn't a single room in my house that doesn't have some books in it.
My interests are wide-ranging. I started listing all genres on my bookshelf, but it was pointless. There isn't a genre that is not present.
I buy more books than I could ever read. Paperback, hardbacks, electronic books, audiobooks. There is a name for people like me; in fact, there are a few:
Whatever you call me, I seem to practice tsundoku, a Japanese term for a stack of books I've purchased but haven't yet read. It's different from having bibliomania, which would suggest I buy books to collect them. I don't want to collect books to create a collection. I don't care about that. I do want to read them, but I already have so many that I don't think I ever will. And new books come out daily. It's impossible to resist.
I think I have a problem.
But how could I not love books? My love goes beyond the title or the story. I firmly believe that every book contains a part of its author, and this is what I find fascinating. It's like having direct access to the author.
Take any book, hold it close to your heart, and imagine what the writing process must have been like. Writing a book is not something you can do in a day, a week, or a month. It occupies your mind and takes over your life for months, even years. It's with you as you go through life. It's with you on your good days and on your bad days. It's always there.
I once heard that:
Thinking is horizontal, but writing is vertical.
To write about a topic, you have to go down vertically. And that's not easy. It forces you to resist the natural impulse to jump around from one thought to another. Writing takes an idea and explores it with a level of rigor that the thinking mind would try to resist. Every word and every punctuation mark matters. The flow must be just right. It must feel right.
This is why I believe that every book contains a part of its author. Because with this sort of deep thinking, the time and sweat spent on it, it seems impossible for it not to.
And this is why I love books.