For the Love of Tomes

Today I bought two books.

Tomes actually.

Any day a book is purchased is a good day.

I was a farm kid. The farm was a wonderful place for a child to cultivate an imagination, no matter how peculiar.

My sisters and I defended tree forts from imaginary marauders. Cooked witches brew in an old metal kettle above an invisible fire.

And pushed the cat around in our doll carriage and attempted to feed it water out of a plastic baby bottle.

But

once in a while I would find a quiet corner rifle through my mother’s bookshelf and cozy in for a good read. Often I would fall so far into a book I would pack it around and bury my nose in it wherever we went, even if it was to the neighbor’s barbeque,

or sitting on a bench in a shopping mall as my mother shopped for shoes.

The larger the book the better… it meant I’d have something to do for a

good

long

while

– a world to visit for days on end.

Those bulky books with bounteous pages included: Gone with the Wind, Christy, Little Women and Little Men (both in the same volume!), Desiree, Queen of Sweden.

I loved them so much I used to pick a character and read aloud all of his/her dialogue….using voices…a skill that now comes in handy when I try to hook high school students onto Macbeth (I make a pretty convincing first witch).

And now,

when I find a book a good 500 pages or longer a feeling of contentment comes over me knowing I will have some place to “go” for 800 pages

and in this particular instance in New Zealand for the 832 pages of Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize Winning The Luminaries

and

771 pages (and 11 years of waiting) for Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.

Are you a fan of big books? What are some of your childhood favourites? If you’ve read “The Luminaries” or “The Goldfinch” let me know your thoughts!