I love the smell of old books.

When I was a kid, we had a gas stove in our kitchen that put out heat in our small farmhouse. In colder months, I would put a towel on top of that gas stove, and sit on it and read for hours.

In grade six and seven and eight, I won the award for reading the most books. I read most of the books I said that I had.

I didn’t, for example, finish reading — not ever — Diary of Anne Frank. I was reading it in grade 7. After a week or so, everybody made fun of me for reading it. Grade 7 boys shouldn’t be reading diaries by girls. It’s sad to admit that I never finished reading it.

I remain upset that there is no such person as Franklin W. Dixon. I lied, I guess, on all of my Hardy Boys book reports. And my earliest male role models were penned by a factory of women, for the most part, pretending to be men. I still feel litigious about that. Chet and Biff vs. Franklin W. Dixon.

I don’t read nearly as much as I used to. Not because of my Anne Frank or Franklin W. Dixon trauma. Sometimes, still, I manage to get unplugged, to disconnect from the electronic feed. I go to bed early with snacks and pop or tea and the ashtray, handy at my bedside.

I love reading in bed. I love the quiet world.

I have never understood peple who can read more than one book at a time. I can’t. I’ve never been able to manage it. I read stubbornly. Even if I don’t entirely like a book I will almost always force myself through it, rather than start another.

I don’t have a favorite book. I have a top book list. One of my favorite books, Les Misarables, took me the better part of a summer to finish off. I’m glad I was alone when I finished it. I was emotionally spent for hours and deliciously sad. Also appearing in my top list: Wuthering Heights, The White Hotel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dracula, Les Liaisons Dangereux , 100 Years of Solitude, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and, without any apologies, many of the Harry Potter books.

SS