I have a secret, desperate love affair with books. I love books. Even if I don't read all of mine, I love them.

I like to hold books. I love to feel the weight in my hands and the whispering softness of the pages. I like the old books with the printed cloth covers, and the new paperbacks with the glossy fronts. I love big books, the unwieldability of them, the awkwardness of carrying them places. I love little books and tiny books, the ones they don't make anymore, the kind that fit in your hand and your pocket: tiny versions of Ivanhoe that come in several volumes, chapters upon tiny chapters of The Three Musketeers. I love books.

I love stacking them and I abosloutely adore putting them on shelves, snug against each other, in no particular order or alphabetically or by colour.

I love stacking books in chests and locking the chest and them opening it later.

I love the smell, that musky, soft, earthy smell of books.

I love books with gilded pages or battered pages or neat cut pages.

I love clutching books against my chest and tucking them under my arm or slipping them in my pocket.

I love reading books in restaurants, on cliffs and lookouts, on the dock, under the bridge, in my house, on my floor, with my cat...

No. Wait. Reading with my cat sucks ass. He always sits on my book.

I love hunting books. I love looking for those obscure twenty-years-out-of-print books by not-so-popular authors that are so bloody hard to find in bakcwards second hand book stores. I love sending people on missions to find me these books. I love hoarding these books, because I read them so much and wear them out, one by one.

I love plowing through old books in school book rooms, ones that just aren't read anymore.

I love reading The Odessey in grade eight and shocking my English teacher.

I love second hand bookstores. If I could have my way, I'd go to only second hand book stores and second hand clothing stores on vacation. (Value Village is my heaven.)

I love hunting old comic books. I love looking and finding and reading them in a frenzy, even though they're terrible and no one likes them anyway.

I have a secret, desperate love affair with books.

Before&After