So Many Books, So Little Time

As a young child, I spent most of my days at the local library. It was a quaint and rather small building that housed probably about 1,000 books at one time. It had only one computer which held the catalog of the books in this one room library. Back then, I felt like it was heaven for me. I would go every week, picking up three to four books that I have never read before or wanted to reread. All the librarians knew me by name and I just spent countless hours perusing the children and young adult section that was literally half of this little library.
I think, at one point, I actually started at the beginning of the older children's section in the As and just read everything that I could get my hands on. I really got into the Herbie Jones Series and who could forget the hilarious storytelling of Louis Sacher with Wayside Stories or There's A Boy in the Girls' Bathroom. This was my escape and my heaven at the same time growing up. The library was my safe zone, a place where anything and everything could happen, all safely in the binds of the books at this little library. I cherished those moments, where I felt like the center of the attention where the books were my audience.

Now, some fifteen-twenty years later, I have my own small library. Yet I seem to have lost that magic of perusing and finding the most perfect book to spend my afternoons and sometimes into the late nights reading and living in another place with the most amazing characters. I believe, as that young child, that these characters were my friends and were there when I needed them. Now, I have close to 600 books and feel horrible that I gain so many books but still have not read them all. This is my own library, one that I worked on for years and now find myself still going to the bookstore and looking for that magical book, only to find a home on a dusty bookshelf among others who were picked up in hopes to be read. So with this, I shall not buy another book for an entire year. I shall only read what I have currently, either in physical book or ebook. There is no need to buy more when I have plenty of greats to choose from. This is my task, my new hobby, that is, to read my books. I hope to read at least one book a week. I want to be known as someone who reads. I was once known as that as a child and now I am hoping to regain that title and not feel foolish for simply saying, "Oh I have that book," and "No, I have not read it." I want to be able to explain the pros and cons of all books that I have and for them to no longer feel neglected. I always claimed as my children and to which, I have been a horrible mother who has ignored them for far to long. They will be my main focus, aside from work. They will be the new life to bring into mine.