the view from here

today was a perfect bookstore day… or coffee day…or stay in sweats all day and read and listen to the rain hit the window kind of day that we get to experience here in the beautiful pacific northwest. but, anyways, like i said,  it was one of those perfect coffee sipping, book reading, comfy clothes wearing type of days- and after spending time studying at a coffee shop, i headed to the bookstore to buy flashcards for a class.

it didn’t take long though for me to get distracted and start wandering through the isles to look at the different books- i figured i deserved it after studying so… studiously.

i love to admire the covers- which although it is said that you should never judge a book by it’s cover, i can’t help it- figuratively, yes, but literally, how can you not!?  i mean, when you’re looking at books, you have to really observe the cover (good art, bad art? text? author’s name bigger or equal to font size of the title?  big turn off, put it down! written by a former MTV v-jay/model?! move on, don’t even touch it), then you have to pick it up, you have to touch the book. i’m like a kid in a store who’s touching everything, except it’s a bookstore, and i’m an adult, and i know that it’s very important to touch the book, you know what i mean? you have to pick it up, (flimsy or stiff, heavy or light? this is all very important stuff) and then if you’re really brave, and/or slightly weird you can smell it too. i swear, books smell crazy good, they don’t just smell like paper- they smell like childhood (that is, if you read a lot of books), and they smell summertime at my grandmother’s because we used to read so many books together, and they smell like smartness. (like how i made a word out of ’smart’ that probably isn’t really a word?) after the book has passed the literal see, touch, smell phase… then you can taste, but not literally. DO NOT PUT THE BOOK IN YOUR MOUTH. i mean something like, read the intro people, or the middle, or the chapter before the chapter before the last chapter. this will tell you if you like their writing style. if not: “remove book from mouth, and place back on the table or shelf and proceed to the next eye catching cover.”

so there i was enjoying one of the little pleasures of life that includes bookstores, pretty books, and four of the five senses, and suddenly i’m realizing that i have other “obligations” to fulfill before i can buy yet another teal colored, stiff, summertime smelling book. obligations that look like 1,043 pages of Anatomy and Physiology, Psycho-logical Stats, not to mention The complete Idiot’s Guide to Statistics (Robert Donnelly Jr. you are my non deistic statistics savior) and Chemistry… then there’s Nouwen- (it’s teal, you know it’s good!), and Donald Miller (circus cover, ditto).

then, these guilt laden, i should be reading those books thoughts enter my mind and i wonder to myself if i might actually enjoy my A+P book or my Stats book if they actually smelled good, or if their covers were actually pretty. who wants to stare at a maroon cover with the word BUTLER in cheesy gold letters dead center, or at some obscure statistics equation as if it’s nice, calming, or fun to look at.