It’s book week in Queensland, and the culmination today at the children’s school was a dress up parade.  Come as your favourite character.   I was seriously tempted to join in, because I does love me a good bit o’ fiction.

It was a close thing, but I didn’t know if Annie Wilkes from Misery (remember the sledge hammer?) was appropriate for the Prep to Year 5 demographic.

And that got me thinking about all things bookish.

So here goes, confession time: I’m a book nerd.

The proof is as follows:

• I have four bookcases of grown up books, that are overflowing, and stacked in all directions.
• I write my name and the date in all my books.
• They are put away alphabetically.
• I do not borrow books, nor do I lend them.
• I still have my first ever “proper” book, Fox in Socks. It’s from my second birthday, I know this because my Mum has written 1973 inside the front cover (!)
• I have one bookcase full of children’s books.  These books do not belong to my children.
• Once upon a time, a particularly shithouse boyfriend threatened to burn all my books, and I thought I might die.
• Sometimes I just sit and hang out with my books… Okay, that’s probably enough right there.

Over the years, I’ve read a few books, but more interestingly, I think they’ve read me.  I like to underline passages, and when I go back and peep at my scratchings, it’s like I’m gazing back, at the me of back then.  Remembering what moved me and grooved me.  What I thought was clever, or funny, or the perfect sentence.  I’m always in search of the perfect sentence.

It’s fun to go back and try and imagine being in love with Edward from Twilight all over again, or to go further back and see myself distraught and blubbering over The Bridges of Madison County.  Not my finest moments.  But there’s so much more.

Pissing myself at Nick Earls, (any book, they’re all hilarious).  Freaking out at Pennywise from ‘It’. Finding a voice speaking to me from the pages of ‘Catcher in the Rye’.  Getting lost in Middle Earth on a quest for the One Ring.  Deciding to defend my virginity at all costs after reading ‘Forever’.

And then further back again, to simpler times in the Enchanted Wood, or hanging out with The Famous Five.

I don’t know when my book addiction first began, but I do know that it was nurtured and grown by my wonderful father, Peter.  But that’s a story for another day.  Maybe tomorrow.  Pop in, I think I might tell you a story about an amazing bloke…

What books do you love?

Do you lend your books out?