Books pt. 1

Books give me that breathless, open-mouthed awe that one feels when you see something beautiful, like an exquisite sunset, or something precious, like a baby, or something priceless, such as your great-great-great grandmother's silverset. Before I continue, let me rephrase my first statement. Books excite me. Whenever I walk into a bookstore, I feel greedy. I want to grab them all and, not just read, but absorb all of the stories, styles, and quirks of the authors. I want to take notes and fine-tune my own writing style by picking out likes and dislikes from other authors.
Old books, books that have lost the smell of new and have even gained a little musty smell; books whose pages are worn and yellow, torn and frayed; books whose title is smudged off with age and whose pages are falling from the binding; these are the books that I cherish that I love, that fill me with awe. For, I see in them, not simply the story that they were in their original printing, but just inside the cover, before one turns to the first chapter, is another story. When you open that cover, even when you simply look at the book, another story comes to life, and this is a story of my own making. As I open the cover, I go back in time with the previous owners of the particular volume I am reading to join the hero and heroine in their fight against evil on the side of right, and find that love that "you cannot break, not with a thousand swords. And you cannot hunt it, not with a thousand bloodhounds." There is history in all those old copies. Those books were precious to their previous owners, because they were the entertainment, the relaxation, the way out of this world into another, the way for small children to defeat the White Witch in the safety of their room, or the young woman to be rescued from "a fate worse than death" in the comfort of her living room with a fire blazing in the wood stove and a cup of tea to keep her company. Those books were loved as the only thing to do in the middle of the prairee during a blizzard. They were adored, as the only thing Mother left her.
These are the things that I think of when I open that front cover of a book and finger through the first few pages. My thoughts are thus occupied until I begin the story and get swept away into the literary intelligence of the artist whose masterpiece has travelled through time to rest in my hands.