This morning, I am thinking about books.

I have too many books. I have too many books and I don’t read enough. I have a hard and demanding and time-consuming job, one that is important to me to do well, and so that takes up a ton of time and energy; maybe the worst thing about it is that my most-free time is late at night before I go to bed — but I can’t read then because it puts me to sleep. Which sucks because I want to read! And it also makes me feel like a lame-o who doesn’t care enough about reading, I mean, if I loved reading enough, I wouldn’t fall asleep doing it. But that’s dumb, because reading relaxes me, and I’m tired, et voila. Nodding off mid-page and dropping the book, which I do all the time. Scares my dogs. Though fortunately I rarely hit myself in the face. Not never; but rarely.

I also have this second job where I’m trying to write books. That also is draining and difficult and time- and energy-consuming, and so the two things together leave very little time for reading. This one gives me a strange feedback loop, too, because while I want to read as much as possible, as it gives me inspiration and fodder for writing, that means that when I read, it makes me want to write, so if the reading is going well that’s generally when I stop reading to write. Conversely, if the writing is not going well, it makes me want to read more, but then I also feel bad for not getting my writing done, because as much as I want to read, that is still my avocation, my hobby, my peaceful relaxing thing; it’s not my job. I don’t have goals and ambitions as a reader, but I do as a writer, so when I’m reading with the intention of getting back to writing, I am more focused on the getting back to writing, which makes me not enjoy the reading as much.

But I love reading. I love getting lost in a book. I love finding a new hidden thing, or a lovely turn of phrase. I love arguing with the author, or questioning why they did a thing — and I adore when I realize later in the book exactly why they did that thing. I love getting to know and understand characters, and I love seeing how things unfold in their lives. I love seeing how authors begin a story, and how they end one. I love reading detailed descriptions, and perfect metaphors, and ideas that I’ve never thought of before but that resonate with me down to the iron strings inside that Emerson talked about in “On Self-Reliance.” I love doing that, too, thinking of things I’ve read while I’m out in the world, and realizing that the book has had an influence on me, that it matters outside of the time I spend between the covers, wandering across the pages.

I love long books and short books, fiction books and fact books, children’s books and adult books, fantasy and science fiction and horror and romance and everything in between. There is no genre I won’t read, and no subject I won’t at least read about, though of course I have my preferences. Bookstores are dangerous for me, because every time I stop and notice something, I want to buy it. Even knowing that I have too many books at home and I don’t know if or when I’ll ever get to read that new book, I still want to buy it. I want it to be mine. I want to have the opportunity to pick that one right off my shelf, and then dive in and start reading it. When I travel, I pack extra books, because I don’t know when I’m packing which book I will want to read next, and I want that first moment of opening a book to be exciting and welcome, not feel onerous or like it’s just the best I can do. I don’t mind too much having too many books, because I just read that Umberto Eco had a personal library of 30,000 volumes, which he never could have read, but that it’s good to have more books than you can read because then you have to choose, which makes you more invested in the book and gives you the chance to learn new things throughout your life. I like that. I want to die with books unread: but not as many as  books read. That’s my goal.

I don’t ever want to be without books.