Dear books,
The required readings in high school messed with me. I not only lost interest in you during my free time, but I also didn’t see the beauty you possess anymore. And my childhood home is filled with thousands of books, because my dad loved them way before I did and now, I finally see what he loves about them. But it took me a couple of years to be honest, to find the interest and the mindset for you again. Reading, fiction and non-fiction, needs a certain (creative) mindset, a mindset that doesn’t make the reading forced, a mindset that makes sure that you’ll learn something while also getting to a certain level of relaxation. Maybe even use it to escape the day-to-day life for a little while.
My perfectionism and you might not be the best of friends. But, as I get older and read more and more, I’m starting to see the perfect in the imperfect. Old books that I find or get from family members that have been loved for so many years. Books that have a story, beyond the one that is written on the pages. Some books are getting more beautiful while they are aging.
Okay, not going to lie, cracked spines still hurt my heart a little, but maybe one day I’ll find something about them that makes me love them too. Crooked edges for example, they have something beautiful. Maybe they show that a book has seen many places, that it has travelled long distances or maybe it didn’t travel much at all, but has been read by so many generations that the crooked edges are just proof of its use.
It takes courage to write and publish a book. In both, fiction and non-fiction. The writing can be hard for sure, but the moment a book you wrote gets published you are thrown into a judgemental zone, because everyone will have an opinion on the words you’ve put onto the paper. It is you who has to decide which opinions are useful and which aren’t. Constructive critics is great, but you’ll always have people that are just trying to find a way to pull you down, sometimes without even reading a sentence in your book.
Even these letters are scary to a certain extent, because everything you write or make that is subjective is scary in a way. So many things you do are scary, some you might recognise as being scary by others you don’t. It might be a character you play in a certain show and you have to interpret the feelings and find a way to show those feelings in the best way possible while playing that character and making sure that the character really comes to life on screen. It might be a song you wrote. It might be a proposal (for anything you can think of) that could be very important. You name it and there will be a very big chance that it will be scary. And that is a good thing! Because finding something scary means that you care about the “things” or the outcome it will have!
Let’s get back to books specifically for a moment. I used to never write in the books that I read, I wanted to keep them as “clean” and “perfect” as possible. Now I find it almost satisfying to highlight sentences that really spoke to me and touched my heart. Now I somehow find beauty in annotating certain passages, in rethinking and rereading the words.
Technology has made many things easier and there are certain books that I’ve read and that I’m okay with reading in a digital format. Though, somehow nothing will ever come close to the feeling and the smell of a new book. Nothing will ever come close to roaming through bookstores for hours and feeling the kindness and the peace in those stores. Not to mention pretty, well organised bookshelves are absolutely to die for. They have something so aesthetic (even when they are chaotic sometimes) that I definitely need a physical copy of some books (okay maybe a lot) in my life!
All my love,
Anna
Dear books,
In my memories my father every month came home with a big brown parcel from the local bookshop. He surprised us every month with some books, some for ourselves, but mostly for the family and we could read what we wanted. It must have here my love for books started en is still going strong. I still can’t pass a bookshop without entering. I love holding books, nose through bookshops and libraries. Books are the greatest gifts in the world. In my house I have more books than I can harbour.
The finest bookshop is De Tribune in Maastricht, but I was also surprised by a lot of second-hand bookshops in Cork-Ireland.
Dear Anna,
I love the way in which you wrote a loveletter to books! I myself can’t live without them. It makes my heart jump when I read how you wrote about the time in secondary school where they forced you to read and forgot to tell you why reading can be a feast! I, myself, had the same feelings of treating a book, while reading. In former days the books I read, had the same appearance as they had, when I bought them in the bookstore…And it was at an elderly age that I started writing, annotate, things in the books I had been reading. I got the same feelings as you have now, I only use a pencil, to underline sentences which I think are important to me. I copy these in a booklet, where I can browse regularly to find quotes that match with what I am thinking of… You are so right with you remark, that when you like to publish your thoughts in an article for a magazine or to write a book yourself, you have to be aware that readers, critics etc can comment your novel, short story or article. And sometimes that can be very painful. The same as you, Anna, had been writing this “loveletter” to “books”! People can read what you wrote and think that it is rubbish. You also mentioned that. And that is why I think that you are very brave to have written this particukar “loveletter”. I loved it and can only say: Keep on writing and reading, Anna!