Bookstore

Ive made a routine.

Every time I start itching for a piece of literary awesomeness to chew on, I start to ask to go to the bookstore. Not as badly as I used to when I was younger and all that mattered to me was ink and paper, the words of a greater mind on a flat surface, waiting for my touch to turn the page. No, when I was younger Id flee to the car after school and beg with all faculties given to me by God to be taken to the bookstore. Now its a gentle nudge in my parents back, starting a week before I HAVE to go to the bookstore.

Like always, they say no. As a child it was a word that destroyed my world, to be told the bookstore would have to wait until the next time Mom needed to go shopping, or Dad had a few minutes to go and get an expensive coffee. Now I weather it, asking everyday, until it leads to the inevitable, me asking several times a day, even several times a minute. My parents, in the end, will give me a time and date they might take me and when that time appears I press until, RESULTS!!

Im in the bookstore.

Getting there is only half the problem. The moment I step through those doors a whole wonder of knowledge reels my mind and confuses my fingertips. Where to go? What to see? Now I have a job and money, trying not to buy EVERY book that fits my fancy and my shelf, despite the fact it may have to squeeze between a few old favorites, is extremely difficult.

But, back to the main event, where to start? On my left a whole array of children's books, favorites from childhood to the new series Ive had my eye on for a while. My right, an array of mysteries and romances and sci-fi, endless possibilities of enticing characters and nights awake with the reading lamp on hoping my mother wont wake. In front, a devastating display of all the classics Ive been meaning to read for ages and still find entirely desirable, despite their daunting appearances. And yet further still, in the bowels of the bookstore, loom the favorites of old and long forgotten, books on best sellers lists, books recently published and extremely clever, so many others longing to be read, so many plots and characters to fill the world twice over.

This is my true dilemma. Despite all my efforts I have never been able to read through the library or even a shelf of the library. If I were to spend all my time reading, a wish from childhood, or my life in a bookstore, or all my time in the library, without sleep or nourishment, I would still never satisfy my need for a good book.

My friends used to find me strange, my brother, a great fan of music and video games, even stranger, but I am who I am, and a book will always feel better in my hands than on a shelf.

Future family, I give you this warning: To find out who Hannah truly is and who she wants to be, take her to a bookstore... or better yet, keep her away from them at all costs, because the moment you take her there is the moment you lose her.