Booklover

Something I always consider before I go on holidays is: what am I going to read during the break? I even did this before we went on our honeymoon this year, and because I’d rationed myself to only bringing one book, I had to make it a good one – so I chose The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. (It was a good book, but I didn’t get very far because I got sidetracked by the resort’s very own library and ended up reading The Da Vinci Code and The Murder Room and part of Shogun as well. Reading wasn’t the only thing we did while on honeymoon, of course, but we did lounge around the pool a lot and what better thing to do than read?)

This year, given that we will be on holidays from Christmas eve until 9 January, I’m going to have to make sure I am well stocked up on reading matter. I still haven’t finished Fistful of Colours and 血色炼狱 Xue se lian yu so they’re going to be in the pile, and I also want to read:

• The Cluetrain Manifesto (as recommended by the Rambling Librarian)

• Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler
• Growth Fetish by Clive Hamilton
• Ake and Isara: Memoirs of a Nigerian childhood by Wole Soyinka
• Dead Air by Iain Banks

Fiction:

• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
• Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt (re-read)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• The Torment of Others by Val McDermid

This is not counting all the books I’m likely to pick up between now and the beginning of the holidays, and any books I receive as Christmas gifts, of course. It’s also not taking into account the fact that I usually get caught up doing other things like playing games, going out, visiting people and watching telly, and the fact that I often change my mind and end up reading other stuff.

When I tell people I’ve just met that I’m a librarian, a frequent response is “Oh, you must really like books!” or “Ah, you must love reading!” I used to get a little peeved by this, because I thought it was such a narrow response, based on stereotypes of librarians as meek, bookish types with bun hairdos and sensible shoes. My response would be “Oh no, it’s not all about books, I don’t even touch books during the course of an ordinary day at work…” Which is true, but doesn’t mean squat to most people, and in my case, bibliophilia is definitely part of the reason I became a librarian. Then one day I realised that I was denying the fact that yes, I am bookish, and I do like books, and so what, anyway? It was truly liberating!

Categories: books, bookish, reading, librarian