Literally Important: Why Books Matter

I’ve always been a voracious reader.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved books.

As a geek writing to other geeks, this is probably not much of a revelation, but it bears stating that, for me, since probably day one, books have been an important part of my life.

By the time I entered high school, I had a small library of books all over the house. My room, which I shared with my kid brother, wasn’t big enough to house all the books I’d gotten from years of Christmas and birthdays, one offs from mom, dad or the grandparents, or books bought with my own money.

The trend continued into the college and that’s where it escalated.

A corner of author Neil Gaiman’s drool-worthy home library

After all, it’s college where we’re exposed to a veritable universe of new writers, works, genres and topics and my brain (and budget) exploded. My personal library was now growing exponentially.

After college, I had a collection of books that was fairly sizeable and it was a collection of books I was proud of. It wasn’t just a trophy collection of novels consumed and philosophies digested, it was also a part of my identity.

However, after college, there came a problem and that problem was life.

I no longer lived at home, and, on top of that, I was married. We both had very low paying jobs (get the idea that journalism is a high paying field right out of your head) and with low paying jobs came apartments that weren’t exactly all that spacious.

And so the book purge began. It hurt a little at first as many of the those books had been with me for more years than I could remember. But it became easy to rationalize cutting back as it was a rarity that I ever read a book a second time.

Books, unlike movies, take a commitment of time, and it was with that that I was able to trim the collection.

After that, we started moving a lot, and as anyone who’s ever moved any amount of books can tell you, those things are heavy. Sure, on their own they can seem all but weightless, but packed into dozens of boxes, you start to realize just how heavy they are.

So knowing that moving was going to be a regular thing, I trimmed the collection even more.

This time, though, I ended up getting rid of almost every book I owned.

On top of that, with the advent of ebooks, no new books were coming into the house. For a while, I’ll admit, I was happy to be free of them. I had more space and when it came time for another move, there weren’t back breaking boxes to heft up and down flights of stairs.

Then the baby arrived, and I was suddenly filled with volumes of regret.

One of my fatherly goals is to raise a critical thinker. I want my son to grow into a man who isn’t afraid of being intellectually challenged I want to send a person out into the world with a solid foundation built upon reading.

I can’t do that without books.

Understand, I’m not talking about having a library of books in the house that I’ll require my kid to read from. I’m talking about raising the kid in an environment where books are a constant. I don’t want them to feel foreign to him or, worse, as a chore. Kids learn by example, and I want to set the example that it’s normal to be surrounded by knowledge.

And trust me, I get that he’s going to be raised in a world where digital is king, and that’s fine.

But I can’t fill my house with ebooks.

For my kid to grow into a well rounded adult, I need knowledge to be an every day part of his life, and that’s why these last 10 months, I’ve been building my library back up.

One book at a time.