The Tangible
I have a confession: I used to eat books.
It drove my mother mad. Around age 7 I started collecting Enid Blyton books, so every time she went out shopping she would duck into a bookstore and pick up one I didn't have. They'd started republishing everything of Blyton's around that time, so there would be a new one out every week, and it was an easy thing she could do to make her oddest doesn't-like-sparkles-or-ponies daughter happy.
So I would get the book of the week, squeal, do a little dance, hug my mother, and sequester myself in my room with the latest tale of spunky loyal girls at a boarding school learning important life lessons, or spunky loyal children on a farm learning important life lessons (but not anything about, like, reproduction, god no) or spunky loyal children in strange twisted fairy-tale-fable adventures with anthropomorphised picture book illustrations. I would read it fast, and then slow, and then put it on my shelf with all the others. I liked that mum always took care to get the same cover themes, so they all looked lovely on my shelf. I like the hardcovers, the snap it made when I shut it. I liked the way my fingers went black when I'd been reading for hours, and the way I could tell that I'd been eating apples while I was reading because the pages got all wrinkled and stained.
And I liked to eat the paper.
I'm not sure if my parents already thought I was an odd little bird by this time or not, but I suspect so, and this only cemented their opinion of me. I'd left a book in the living room, and my mother picked it up and noted that all the corners had been torn from the pages. She asked me what I had done, and I shrugged, and said I had torn the corners out and eaten them.
You what, she said. Something in her voice made me cautious.
I like to... eat the paper?
Are you hungry?
No.
Does it taste good?
Not really. It doesn't taste of anything.
Then why?
I just like to.
Since this was not remotely the oddest thing nine-year-old me got up to (I spent several months in third grade sleeping on the floor next to my bed for no reason at all, refused to wear shoes, and stored sandwiches in my desk until they went moldy) and mother dearest had four other relatively normal children who never painted their ceiling navy blue or ate things that were manifestly not food or read the dictionary for funsies and also to figure out exactly what "promiscuous" meant, the subject was dropped.
Later, she wondered if I could eat newspaper or catalogues that were going to be thrown out, instead of my books. No, I said. It's not the same.
I don't have those Enid Blyton books anymore; they disappeared sometime during the high school years, and I don't eat paper anymore. But I still collect books like a packrat. I still love the feel of paper and the smell of it, the excitement and delight of turning that first page, the satisfying snap of the cover at the last page. I still wait twelve months for every new Terry Pratchett book so it can match the paperback collection I've got on my shelf. I value books as objects, as things I can hold, things I can display, things to have.
But. Books are the words contained in them. Likely the next big tech purchase I will make will be an ereading device of some kind; I think it will suit me down to the ground to have books at my fingertips anywhere and everywhere. I already read so much fic online, so god knows I know it is just as genuine and affecting and wonderfully written as a physical book; it loses nothing of consequence in the change of medium.
Except the taste of paper. (It's very dry, if you were wondering.)
It drove my mother mad. Around age 7 I started collecting Enid Blyton books, so every time she went out shopping she would duck into a bookstore and pick up one I didn't have. They'd started republishing everything of Blyton's around that time, so there would be a new one out every week, and it was an easy thing she could do to make her oddest doesn't-like-sparkles-or-ponies daughter happy.
So I would get the book of the week, squeal, do a little dance, hug my mother, and sequester myself in my room with the latest tale of spunky loyal girls at a boarding school learning important life lessons, or spunky loyal children on a farm learning important life lessons (but not anything about, like, reproduction, god no) or spunky loyal children in strange twisted fairy-tale-fable adventures with anthropomorphised picture book illustrations. I would read it fast, and then slow, and then put it on my shelf with all the others. I liked that mum always took care to get the same cover themes, so they all looked lovely on my shelf. I like the hardcovers, the snap it made when I shut it. I liked the way my fingers went black when I'd been reading for hours, and the way I could tell that I'd been eating apples while I was reading because the pages got all wrinkled and stained.
And I liked to eat the paper.
I'm not sure if my parents already thought I was an odd little bird by this time or not, but I suspect so, and this only cemented their opinion of me. I'd left a book in the living room, and my mother picked it up and noted that all the corners had been torn from the pages. She asked me what I had done, and I shrugged, and said I had torn the corners out and eaten them.
You what, she said. Something in her voice made me cautious.
I like to... eat the paper?
Are you hungry?
No.
Does it taste good?
Not really. It doesn't taste of anything.
Then why?
I just like to.
Since this was not remotely the oddest thing nine-year-old me got up to (I spent several months in third grade sleeping on the floor next to my bed for no reason at all, refused to wear shoes, and stored sandwiches in my desk until they went moldy) and mother dearest had four other relatively normal children who never painted their ceiling navy blue or ate things that were manifestly not food or read the dictionary for funsies and also to figure out exactly what "promiscuous" meant, the subject was dropped.
Later, she wondered if I could eat newspaper or catalogues that were going to be thrown out, instead of my books. No, I said. It's not the same.
I don't have those Enid Blyton books anymore; they disappeared sometime during the high school years, and I don't eat paper anymore. But I still collect books like a packrat. I still love the feel of paper and the smell of it, the excitement and delight of turning that first page, the satisfying snap of the cover at the last page. I still wait twelve months for every new Terry Pratchett book so it can match the paperback collection I've got on my shelf. I value books as objects, as things I can hold, things I can display, things to have.
But. Books are the words contained in them. Likely the next big tech purchase I will make will be an ereading device of some kind; I think it will suit me down to the ground to have books at my fingertips anywhere and everywhere. I already read so much fic online, so god knows I know it is just as genuine and affecting and wonderfully written as a physical book; it loses nothing of consequence in the change of medium.
Except the taste of paper. (It's very dry, if you were wondering.)