22,000 tales yellowing with age…

My grandfather owns over 22,000 books. Books of all genres and types, widths and lengths, colors and bindings. Practically every wall in his house is covered in bookshelves from floor to ceiling, filled with books two rows deep. New books, old books, paperback, hardcover, books with old, worn leather bindings. It’s a gorgeous sight for the average bibliophile. He owns so many books that he cannot keep even half of them in the house. He and my stepgrandmother had to buy a storage place to keep all of the books that were not kept in the home. It amazes me. As I walked through the house last night, letting my fingers run adoringly across each spine that I saw, I couldn’t help but hope that one day I would have a library to match my grandfather’s. From his library he pulled out a book for me. Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder. A book that I’ve been wanting to read for a year now. I had never told him about my desire to read Sophie’s World, and yet that was the one that he pulled from the shelves. I clutched it for the rest of the night, not wanting to set it down in case I would forget about it and fail to bring it home with me.How is it that simply reading words upon an otherwise blank page can be so addicting, and so enthralling? How can it be that I fall in love with nothing more than paper and ink?