For the Love of Books

By  Elizabeth Esse Kahrs        

I am sitting at my blue metal desk in my fourth grade classroom waiting for my ditto to arrive. As the teacher walks with a fresh stack of papers in her hands, I can smell the solvent in the air. When she places the ditto on my desk, I do what everyone else does—I scoop it up, press it to my face, and inhale. There is nothing like the smell of a fresh ditto, hot off the press, with its purple ink and waxy paper and soothing chemical warmth.

Books still have this effect on me, especially the old ones. As a child, I went through my parent’s bookshelves, not only to catalog the items, but to smell them. Kon-Tiki, In Cold Blood, I’m Okay, You’re Not So Hot—I’d sit on the couch and read snippets while taking in the aroma. There was, and still is, something about the physicality of a book that appeals to me—the weight, the shape, the cover, the pages. I’d gaze at those books through the glass doors of the bookcase and know that they had been read and loved, by my parents and by many others.

A book demands attention. It requires that you sit down with it, that you feel the weight of it in your lap, or acknowledge its presence in front of you. A book has a way of saying, Slow down and enjoy me. Use me to relax. Breathe me in. Remember.

Remember when you knew how to be quiet and alone with yourself.

When the world used to be like before everyone had some sort of device plastered to their ears or fingertips.

When people used maps instead of Garmin’s.

When people went outside to simply enjoy nature without multitasking along the way.

When people were able to listen, pay attention, and imagine.  

The Kindle, the Nook, the Ereader—I’ve never experienced any of these firsthand, but I do read on my computer screen and I know it’s just not the same. The experience of losing yourself in a world simply cannot occur when the reading is reduced to a document in a glass-enclosed screen. This is not to say that there is no place for such devices. But I fear with this evolution, the engrossing experience of reading for pleasure will be permanently altered and maybe even irrevocably damaged along the way.

            We live in a society that continues to move way too fast.  Physical books, perhaps, are the very last holdout