When Books Become Real

Or How Books are My Velveteen Rabbit

When I read a book, the spine cracks. The pages absorb the oils of my fingers and occasionally bend or tear when I turn them. I have a large collection of bookmarks, but I’m not above using a receipt or business card or whatever flattish thing is within arm’s reach when I come to a stopping point.

But let’s get real.

Sometimes I eat Cheetos when I read books and there are orange smudges on the pages. Sometimes I spill my coffee. Sometimes a line strikes me as so profound or funny or remarkable that I want to remember it, so I’ll underline it if I have a pen or pencil handy^[1] or I’ll make a little fold at the bottom of the page to mark where it is.

I’m aware all of this makes some book people think of me as a heretic. These people think you have to keep books pristine. Only such caretaking shows the proper love and respect for literature.

I disagree.

I reread books. As an adult I’ll let years go by, and it’s interesting to me how books change when you go through them a second time. When you visit old friends and rehash old material with the advantage of perspective.

When I was younger, I’d reread books so often the pages would become rounded and soft and the covers would come off. I’d rehab them with Scotch tape and when the best pages fell out I’d stick them back in and hope for the best. It wouldn’t occur to me to buy another copy. Why? A battered book is a sign of a read book, a loved book, a literate owner. I don’t just own this for show, no, I’ve read this one so much it fell apart.

This book? It’s my Velveteen Rabbit.

Harriet the Spy was my Velveteen Rabbit when I was a kid. So was Little House on the Prairie.

Even now I think of Harriet as I people watch in the airport, getting little snips of their lives and wanting to write down dialogue so I’ll remember it later. I’ve reread her a couple of times as an adult. The same copy with the taped-on cover and the soft yellow pages. It hits different—did you know the parents are fully formed characters? They went right over my head as a child.

I know that there are lots of people, people I love and respect, who will react with horror when I say this: go ahead and dog-ear that page if you want. Leave your book face down on the table. If you get a chocolate smudge on the page, when you read the book again, maybe you’ll remember that chocolate bar when you read it this time. Literature is a living thing. It changes over time. What we read when we’re ten isn’t the same thing we read when we’re fifteen or fifty, even if it’s the same book. It shouldn’t stay in stasis. It should be loved, even to the point where it’s ugly, because that’s how you know the story has become real.

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^[1] Rarely

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