Books

I brought almost no books with me to London, attempting to keep the weight of my luggage to a minimum. While here, I've bought very few books, due to constraints in budget and the heavy thought of carrying or mailing them back home next year. I have been making extensive use of my local library here, which has its own delights, and I've been keeping a list at goodreads.com to remember what I've read.

But I really miss having my favourite books around me. I miss favourite passages and poems that I look up and reread regularly. I miss friends' inscriptions in books that were gifts. Whenever (in spite of the risk to my bank account) I stop by a bookstore and catch sight of the uniform row of the Patrick O'Brian series, I reach out and caress the spines longingly. But the books I visit in bookstores are not mine. They don't open at the right places. They have the wrong covers (or it's wrong that they have a cover at all). They weren't devoured and absorbed and broken and stained by me and the people I've chosen to share them with.

My books are stuffed in boxes in my parents' attic, waiting for me to return and dust them off and restore them to their places of honour.