By the Book

"It is a good rule...to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books."   ~ C.S. Lewis

If you asked me how I spent my summers when I was growing up, I would not tell you "at the beach" or any typical vacation. The only times I remember our family going out of town for a week were a few summers when we went to stay near a clinic that offered hot mineral baths which my father took to ease his arthritis pain.  Those days we spent in a tiny motel with a kitchenette where we prepared our meals, certainly not remarkable by today's standards of getaways.

My main source of adventure and recreation for those hot Texas summer months was a small, plain stone building in a park near the center of our small town.  This was the Jacksonville Public Library.  I was allowed to go often to check out books.  I remember dark wood floors and the stacks of books lined up waiting for me to slide them from their shelves to pick my maximum allowed volumes to take home.  Today, my home is full of books, but I still go to the library, often taking my granddaughter along.  When I open a brand new book, I love the smell and the feel of the fresh pages.  But there is story in holding and reading a book others have held and read.  The Lewis quote reminds me beyond that, the new and the old are more than  age of the paper and binding.  I try to balance my reading by including long loved classics as well as the newly written must reads.