The Joy of Reading

A few Sundays past, when I had reason to be in the neighborhood, I would find joy on the Upper East Side. I loved to ride the escalator to the top floor of Borders and sit, bag slung over chair, behind a pile of stacked books and magazines. And just read.

Sometimes I would finish entire books (“He’s Just Not That Into You” being one as it was small and pink) at the high wooden counter, sipping an iced coffee to justify my thumbing through pages I would never purchase. It was a small pleasure for me, to be able to survey the stacks in an orderly, logical fashion the way bookstores are composed (damn that Dewey Decimal system, I’ll never understand it), with no snooty librarian and no proof of residence and no big imposing steps and aisles typical of the city’s municipal libraries. No pressure to pile literary musings, reference books, business manuals and titles that begin, “The History of…” in my arms. No unspoken code broken if I took to a magazine, because an institution is meant for learning, not gratification.

Plus, Borders provided intimate solace. Quiet. Warm. Smelled of hot chocolate and coffee beans. And the freedom to fritter away the afternoon on my guilty loves: how-to instructionals on money management, organization, and career advancement. (None of which I’ve since mastered in the slightest.)

For me, it was a fresh start up there, beyond the scaffolding and crowds of the streets below. A start that could change dependant on my moods. Where did I want to go that day? Anything imaginable was reachable. Anything envisioned, I could simply pluck off of the shelves and was immediately immersed in another land, another world, another life.

As I've gotten older, the bliss of a bookstore has replaced the opportunity of libraries, now synonymous with term papers and late fees. The magic trapped in the children's section of the library dilutes by the time you arrive as an adult. No painted construction paper on the walls, no colorful seats, no big open space to lie on the floor, no Dr. Suess mentalities reflected in the architecture of the room.

No matter how fashion, indie music and angst may change me, once in a bookstore I am transformed into that loud little girl again. The one with blunt bangs and tiny Smurfette icons at the corners of her candy-pink glasses, who for three years in a row won the elementary school’s summer reading award at Buchanan-Verplank’s library (an accomplishment I was proud enough of to mention to a boyfriend, who not-so-politely informed me it was horribly nerdy and should be kept to myself). Back then I’d devour Judy Blume (I read and re-read “Fifteen”, sighing as I computed the math--an excruciating eight years before I’d be a sophomore). Also, anything on Egyptians, dinosaurs, and ocean dwellers. Finally and forcibly, I’d read Newberry Award winners (from my parents’ “summer reading lists"). When I was smaller and at the library, everything my mom and dad told me was true. I could do anything, be anything in the world that I wanted. All I had to do was see it to become it.

Back there at the library and now at the bookstore, time is stagnant and the world is accessible. There are no boundaries, no limitations to what I can dream. No one interrupts, no one says "no". No one has authority to tell me what I can become, because there, I am anything I want.

And there, it's never too late to wish, to want, to hope.

To aspire.