I have a confession to make.
I love books.
(And I’m sorry if that inadvertently earwormed you with the Foo Fighters.)
(Or if that did.)
Serious business though, I love reading. I practically grew up in a library. At home, I am surrounded by books. Here at the Raven I am surrounded by books. One of my other jobs is reviewing books.
And I always think that I need more books.
Doesn’t every bibliophile, though? Yeah, we could finish (or even begin) reading the books that we already have at home before buying new ones or accepting the ones that a friend is giving away because they need room to actually move about in their house. But we won’t. We’ll get around to reading them eventually, and in the meantime yes, we will get that new novel because someday we’ll get around to reading that as well.
This is how I grew up, around mountains of reading material.
I thought that was normal.
As I reached the age where you are old enough to visit friend’s houses and make acute observations, I realized that not everyone had multiple sets of encyclopedias in their homes. Or stacks of books that would not fit on the book cases. Some friends never went to the library.
When I went to school, I was mystified that my fellow classmates dreaded book reports. That they didn’t look forward to “Drop Everything And Read” time.
To each his own, I supposed.
I believed Egon when he told Janine that print is dead.
Maybe we were the odd ones for consuming novels at such a rapid pace. (Remember before you had to join the workforce? I read so much then! The first time that I read ‘IT’, it took me roughly three days.)
I accepted that maybe it was just my family and a few like-minded people that genuinely liked reading. Most people I talked to preferred to “wait for the movie to come out” if I started talking about a particularly good story that I was in the middle of.
Well, what if a movie never came out? They didn’t care. There were other stories being acted out on the screen, and that was fine.
Lately, though, I have been seeing more about books. About reading.
At first, I figured it was due to the company I keep and what I follow on the ol’ social media beast. This first week of the new year, I have seen quite a few posts about reading.
There’s the “challenge” to post seven covers of books that you love and tag a friend each day to do the same. I quite like that.
There’s also a post going around where you pledge to give the first five people commenting on your post a book sometime this year, provided that they post the same promise themselves. I like that, too.
Last night, we went and saw ‘Mary Poppins Returns’. There was an entire song and dance number about reading and not judging a book by its cover. That was fantastically done, and I absolutely loved it.
So is this one of those “attracting like to like” phenomenons where I’m noticing more bookish things because I constantly surround myself with words, or are more people actually embracing reading?
It could be a bit of both, but recently I have read that book sales were up for 2018 compared to the previous year. Sales of physical books in print has grown every year for the last five years, and it’s predicted that sales will continue to grow one percent annually. It is expected that by the year 2022, around the world people will be spending approximately $50 billion on books.
All of this makes me incredibly happy.
Read on, friends.
Come on in, grab a book off of any shelf and pull up a chair. We have so many great books! There truly is something for everyone here, including the kids.
Get a hot drink and sit for a spell. This is the perfect place to get lost in a story.
-Jessica, your Media Specialist