explanation

The point of this is not that I am reading; I would be reading anyway. I haven't started reading any faster or more frequently. The point might be that I am reading these books, which I have gathered, for some reason, over the years. I amassed them. I brought them home because of their promise or their looks. I may have thought to feed myself with them--to change or enrich my thoughts. But most of them I haven't read because there have always been library books that needed to be read and returned. Those have had more urgency and more romance. I just love libraries, and I get a thrill from borrowed books. I don't know what possessed me to own any book, but I guess I thought it was important. I grew up in a house with books (well, in what seemed like many many different houses, but always with those same books), and the only things I was certain I should have in my adult life were books. These were also the only easy things to acquire. Finding clothes and furniture and cookware still causes me a great deal of anxiety, but books seemed just to appear. They followed me home from the Strand, from the sales at public libraries, from the sidewalk. I find I keep trying to say that these books are particular, but I haven't managed to say why yet. It might be that I think they are a better reflection of myself than the jumble of books I read from libraries. I read mostly novels and plays from libraries, and their quality varies wildly. Every so often I'll buy a novel that I've read before and loved, but for the most part the books I buy tend to be essays, critical works, biographies, histories, and poems--things that I think look slightly challenging and a little obscure but pleasurable and interesting. The books I put on my shelf are a hypothesis I have about myself and my interests. Reading them will be a way of testing my hypothesis.

I also want to find out what it is I am doing when I am reading. I know escape has something to do with it, and I suspect that is the largest part, but I would like to explore what the escape consists of. Then, too, I want to think about the ways I learn from books (even when I shouldn't--even when I'm being too gullible) and the ways they affect my thoughts.

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