Part of the allure of reading is finding fictional worlds more interesting than the predictable day-to-day of real life. But books haven’t simply offered escape. They have given me depth, they have given me perspective, the sense that my days and nights have expanded, opened out.…The fact is that at the age of forty-three years and twenty-eight days I have a room that can rightly, justifiably be called a library. It’s a physical thing as much as a brain and heart thing; it’s a space, a place, a room all of my own, in every possible way. It is without question my favorite room in the house, the most important room, as archaic as that sounds, as archaic as it probably is, but I really don’t care. My library is my anchor, it’s my look-out, it’s my lighthouse.
I was just talking with a friend about our respective literary nerdisms; mine history, hers fantasy/sci-fi. I said that I didn’t want to live my own life, I just want to spend it reading about everything else that’s ever happened. But I don’t mean it as a disparaging comment on the quality of my everyday life. I just cheerfully accept that I’m an ordinary, nondescript schmo with no good stories to tell, and it’s more fascinating to read the greatest stories of humankind’s adventures during our brief time at the pinnacle of existence. And yes, I, too, would like to have an entire room I could justifiably call a library, rather than a dozen or so mismatched bookcases scattered throughout the house. Someday…