Always Books

I've lived my life among books. Every room in the houses I've lived in has had at least one wall with a bookcase against it. We all read. My Uncle Gordon faced family visits by settling in a distant room with the battered copy of “The White Company” he read all the time. (There's Gordon on page 42 of a 750-page book, his sisters teased) My sister Lydia ate up books, literally. As she read down the page, her fingers worked at the edges, balling up the paper then popping it into her mouth. Our copy of “Gone with the Wind” was harvested this way so thoroughly that it had to be thrown away, something that never happened in our family.

When I was eight I resolved to read all the books in the children's room of the Providence Atheneum. Chapter books that is; I don't recall spending much time with picture books and indeed there weren't that many around when I was a little kid during the Second World War. The vow in the Atheneum lasted until the middle of the first row of A's when I encountered a book with a cover I didn't like the look of and a first paragraph I couldn't understand. I skipped it and don't remember feeling upset about it. There were so many more books to read. There always have been.