Where is that Damn Book?

When I picked it up, I felt the familiar sensation of the thick, dry pages rustling underneath my fingers. It awakened in me that insatiable desire to read. My library full of books had been weighing on me and I kept adding to it in the hopes that maybe this will be the book that’ll bring me back to a place of solace and comfort.

Lately, I feel like my only reading is a never-ending search and review of evidence-based interventions, regular analysis of the latest research, and study after study to fill the gaps that grad school had left. Academic journals, epidemiological reports, and program evaluations became my daily dose of reading. I spend chunks of my day reading only the relevant parts of “The Little Book of SAS” (no, not that kind of sass) or reading forums to help me learn the new language of statistical coding.

Controversial opinion here: while the COVID pandemic has been devastating for most people, a lot of good, healthy things came from it, for me, at least. I started putting more emphasis on my wellbeing, activities, thoughts, moments. Which ones harm me, or otherwise prevent me from being my most authentic and healthy self? I made lists, which isn’t a new task, but these were filled with all the things that recharge me. Not a to-do list by any stretch of the imagination, but a “can-do” list that I could turn to when I needed it. I started taking breaks to exercise, throw a load of laundry in the wash, or just go outside for a few minutes. I took meetings outside and took short breaks to tend to my plants. I was lucky because my employer encouraged and supported personal wellbeing. So I’ve been on this journey over the past year to be the best me I could be. And part of that is reconnecting with reading for fun. Part of that is reconnecting with writing.

I almost talked myself out of reading, almost chose television over the comfort of the pages I didn’t know I missed. When I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read, I almost gave up. I would have resigned myself to scrolling through Netflix until I ultimately settled on the same show I usually watch when I’m home alone because am I really going to pay attention to this new thing? What if I really like it and I think my husband will like it, too? Then I’ll have to start over when he gets back. Then it’s back to doom-scrolling on social media while the television plays in the background because why would I pay close attention to a thing I’ve seen a hundred and two times? Endless cycles of bullshit that’s not helping anyone anymore.

But I had a choice to make and by golly I wasn’t going to fall into the same habits. It’s 2021! New Year New Me, right? But not really. It’s more like New Year Old-But-Better Me. The me who isn’t boring. The me who is more in touch with himself. The me who is not someone who just sits back and lets life slide on by because it’s easy. I think there’s a word for that. Chronic laziness? Anxiety- and depression-induced apathy? Comfort? It’s difficult to tell which.

I really wanted to read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I figured if I was going to get back into reading, get back in touch with this part of me I’d buried deep below, I might as well go with one of the books that inspired me to write back when I was in high school. And this copy is pretty cool, it’s one of those Barnes and Noble editions where they make the hard cover super fancy to look like an old book (and I’ve got a thing for old books). Yeah, that ought to get me in the mood to read. Go big or go…well, I’m already always home so I guess go outside? I’ll need to work on a new adaptation to that idiom that I can use during pandemic.

There was just one problem: the book was missing. It wasn’t in it’s place on the bookshelf with all of the other old-fashioned books I have - and yes, I have many. See, I like to collect ancient and over-used books, especially from the used bookstore in my hometown - I need to get back there soon. I especially like the old health textbooks. Some of the stuff they recommended for common ailments in the mid 1800s is hilarious!

Because my copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray is in the style of an old book, I usually keep it with the others. It’s really the only cohesive aesthetic my bookshelves have. But it isn’t there. There isn’t even a space on that shelf where it would have been. And remember, I haven’t been reading anything in my library in a while, so all of these books have largely been untouched for a while. I’m sure I must have done the thing I’ve been doing consistently over the pandemic where I go into the library when I’m bored, grab a book, say “I’m definitely going to read this,” get distracted with social media or television or my dogs, set it down and not read it. It’ll sit there for a few days before finally I put it back on the shelf, coming to terms with the fact that I won’t actually read it. Not today. Probably not tomorrow. Better not leave it lying around. Don’t want to clutter the house.

But I searched for that damn book. If I was going to get back into reading, live up to my New Year’s Resolution (for once in my life), then I needed this book.

I still can’t find it.

I have no idea where it is. I’d say someone probably snagged it (oh yeah, I used to have a library app where I catalogued all my books and was able to show what I lent to whom…I should download that again), but let’s face it: it’s a pandemic - no one has been here in the better part of a year.

I realized as I searched that I have books everywhere in my house. An entire wall of my library/office is a bookshelf we built when we moved in. It’s full. So full, there are books shoved in horizontally on top of the neatly organized vertical books. I have reference books in my desk. I have reference books on my desk. I have epidemiology and biostatistics textbooks under my monitors for a more ergonomic workspace. I have books on a shelf above my bed. I have cookbooks on a shelf in my kitchen. They’re literally everywhere, so there’s no telling where this damned book might be.

I found myself staring at the bookshelf in the same way that I used to stare at the Netflix offerings (or the refrigerator and pantry when I’m bored, and eating is the proper solution to boredom, right?). Here we go. I was about to repeat the Netflix process. I was about to pick a book, thumb through it, set it aside and start doom scrolling. I was a solid five minutes away from slipping into a place where I just waste electricity with the television playing and me not really paying attention.

My eyes landed on a book that one of my coworkers sent me for my birthday: Tune in Tokyo by Tim Anderson. She’d been raving about this author, said that he and his writing style reminded her of me. We talked at length about the book while in the sweltering heat of the newly quarantine-friendly, outdoor, drive-through Food Farmacy last summer at work. She had gotten into his books during quarantine and figured I’d be able to as well.

True to form, that was MONTHS ago. The Amazon gift receipt was still under the front cover with it’s “Happy Birthday Sharz” note from my coworker. What a great bookmark, though. All of my other bookmarks are in other books I started and didn’t make it through, and I couldn’t take one of those because I was eventually going to get back to that book, pick up where I left off. Right?

I started reading and couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was because of the book itself - the story or the writing. Both were very good; I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it. But that wasn’t what drove me to keep going.

It filled a gaping hole in me that I wasn’t aware needed filling. As I turned each page, feeling the thickness move from one side to the other, I had to keep going. I needed to consume it. Like a drug, it’s all I wanted, and before I was even two-thirds done, I was thinking about my next fix. I have a whole library of books I can read, most of which I haven’t even opened. My mind started jumping as my eyes continued to scan the page without registering any of the words. Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, all of those post-apocalyptic novels we were supposed to read in high school but didn’t (I instead spent my time reading Cliff’s Notes, plays, and Harry Potter). I had fiction, non-fiction, historical biographies, books about gardens and the Tower of London that I shelved and never picked up again. What could I start next?

I had to re-read the paragraph my eyes mindlessly scanned because I wasn’t paying attention. Even that sensation was phenomenal. I remember that happening when I was younger, when I used to spend all my time reading. I would be reading, my mind would wander and by the time I’d bring it back, I was halfway down the page and needed to go back. Even that experience gave a rush of satisfaction, validation of this reconnection with my past and who I’ve always described myself as: a bookish kinda guy.

I ate that shit up. I sat cloistered in my room with that book while my husband watched the shows I never had an interest in watching, until I flipped that last page. I remembered that feeling I used to get when finishing a book, usually nonfiction set in another world. I remembered that weird shift in my mind where I needed to pull myself back out of that world. You know the feeling, where you look around the mundane bedroom, reeling from the sudden and not-quite-voluntary ejection from the world that sat in your hands. It always took me a couple of minutes to get my bearings, allow my head to stop spinning from that plane shift. You realize that no one quite understands what you just went through, and yet thousands of people who also read that book know exactly what you just went through.

That didn’t quite happen for me at the end of this book. Not to the degree I was used to. But it did feed that addiction. I needed more, and I needed a book that would let me experience that shift in reality at the end that I hadn’t experienced in years.

I peeked my head out of my bedroom. The TV was still on. And like the book junkie I had returned to, I was thrilled to hear that my husband had one more episode to finish out the series. Yes! That would give me at least forty-five minutes to start my next fix.

Into the library I slinked. I carefully returned the now visibly worn book to its place on the shelf and realized that this is the first time I don’t have my books organized by genre and author name. This is the first house I’ve lived in where I didn’t do that immediately upon moving in. We’ve lived here for going on six years now. I’d have to fix that. Maybe when I re-download that library app. I could make a weekend out of it.

I grabbed my next dose, one that I had actually started near the beginning of quarantine (before I had done all of the self-work that would put me in a place to be able to return to my roots). The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. I had started it when it came out in May and couldn’t get through much of it. Not to any fault of Suzanne’s. My husband read it through fairly quickly before I committed to giving it a go. But I wasn’t in a place to be able to get into books back then. Now I was, and I was chasing that dragon - the jolt of being ejected from the world bound in hardcover.

After I wracked my brain trying to remember what happened and started the chapter over to catch myself up, I was hooked once again.

Then it happened. “The show’s over, time for dinner!”

Damn. There was no chance I could continue tonight; I had run out of time. I set the book down gently on my nightstand, promising to return to it the next day like some cheap love affair that I couldn’t quit.

In that moment, in that day, my love for reading was reawakened. Like taking your first breath after emerging from months of being buried in a deep depression. And for a brief moment, I felt like myself again.