Books on my Bed

For as long as I can remember, I have had to clear a pile or two of books from my bed before retiring.
I  toss them unceremoniously on a chair or if I'm not too tired arrange them nicely in a stack on the floor. They must be right there where I need them to be: ready to be read in the morning.

Most of them were library books. They still are. Although I own an awful lot of books I don't feel they represent more than a small percentage of what I have read. I fell in love with libraries from the first moment my mom took me to one when I was about five or six. I think it was the freedom of it, the unrestricted ability to roam and look at whatever  caught my eye.

I guess I was kept to the children's room but I don't remember feeling hemmed in in any way. It was just a lot of fun to look over dozens of titles and choose whatever I wanted to bring home.

Later I would take as many would fit into my bicycle basket or as many as I  could lug out to our car. I brought them home and spread them out on my bed and dug in. They looked different at home. Some I thought were going to be great turned out to be boring.

Some were not for reading but just for their colors and pictures. Later I would bring home books about subjects that looked interesting in the library but not interesting enough to actually read.  Most of the books were rejected for one reason or another. It was good to have a backup pile to see me through until the next visit.

When the bookmobile came to our school I was shocked to learn that we were allowed to borrow only one book. What if i didn't like it? Was I supposed to read it anyway? Not me. From very early on I felt no guilt about not reading a book. Which was strange since I managed to feel guilty about almost everything else.

I somehow believed that it was the books job to engage me. It was nice to have an area of my life I
didn't have to feel guilty about. I could read classics or I could read drivel. I could read lengthy books or short ones. As long as the story gave me pleasure I stuck with it.

Somehow that pile of books by my bed gave me a feeling of independence. I had this one area in my life where I could experience freedom