Shelves lined with books. Row after row of beautiful tomes of immense knowledge just waiting to be read. I pull one book off its shelf, then another. Soon I am staggering to a nearby table with a towering stack of my selections. I dive into realm after realm of unseen possibilities. I am a sailor on a ship bound for Naples. I knocked the ball out of the park and am rounding the bases with no one to stop me. The cave troll has me pinned up against the wall with his dagger at my throat. I’m shouting orders at my men with bombshells flying all around me. I am about to discover the microbe responsible for tuberculosis…
“Come on, Michelle, it’s time to go home. Have you picked the books you want to check out yet?” asks my mother.
Startled, I look up from my adventures as a knight on a quest for glory. The world had not changed. The library looked just an ordinary as it always did, and I was back in the real world. I felt vaguely disappointed.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” I reluctantly admit. I took my stack of books and we left the library.
The scenario I have just described was not an uncommon one throughout my childhood. Even now, I find it difficult, when I enter a room full of books, to not simply start reading voraciously as if the rest of the world did not exist. It is not the roomful of books but the books themselves that bring me true joy, however. When I am inside a book, I am one with it. I am oblivious to my surroundings, and I am at once anything and everything. I can be anyone, go anywhere, do anything. I can travel from New York to Paris in the span of a few minutes. I can fight dragons in faraway realms with complicated names. I can read about famous scientific discoveries and feel as if I am really there, watching history in the making. Perhaps it is the peaceful atmosphere, or the variety of environments in which I can find myself. Whatever it is, as long as I am surrounded by books and have the capacity to read them, I am happy.