22. My Favorite Piece of Furniture

This is my "entertainment center". It's too small and its contents are currently scattered around the vast ocean of stuff that is my room, coming up for air only when I find them underneath something else. That's how I choose which book to read; if it's hiding under the clothes I'm going to wear, maybe it needs some attention, too.

I read my first book a month after my fourth birthday. It was a Dick and Jane book, which my grandmother kept in a trunk because it had once belonged to my father. I remember sitting on my grandmother's lap, with her arms around me and her thin, graceful finger running underneath the letters. Suddenly, as she paused for me to make sounds the yellow bird on television taught me to make, the forms had meaning and strength and depth.

I was in love.

I am still in love. I would much rather read a book than watch a movie. I would much rather revel in the beauty of words and the intensity of sentences than watch underdeveloped characters flaunt their features on-screen. A book is warmer. It fits in my hands. It smells good.

Ohh, it smells so good. On Sunday at church I whispered fervently to my pewmates, "It smells like books!! It smells like books !" (it did !) and they looked at me like I had lost it. Maybe it was a memory thing. Maybe because I felt comfortable, my senses did a pulled a fast one on me and conjured up the warmest, friendliest scent imaginable. Do you think they make book perfume ?