I love books.
I love 'em, can't help it, I am a card carrying bibliophile. I adore books and I love reading. In college, one of my all time favorite classes was on the history of books. I feel like few academic experiences I have had have been so demanding and so rewarding as my time studying books themselves.
Sadly, as is often the case with working in the Humanities, the excessive reading of a full course load often leaves a student with little time or energy to read for fun (especially if he hopes to have some semblance of a social life as well). So for a time my fervor for reading was squelched by my educational demands (and the demands of sleep). Yet, since graduating, I have gradually been rekindling my love of reading and my joy of books.
However, in Korea, (English) books are a bit harder to come by than back home. Sadly, book shops are not frequent in this country and English bookstores are even harder to locate. So far I have encountered one English bookstore in Korea (What The Book in Seoul, a fine little place with an embracing atmosphere that is the best of both a retail book seller and a secondhand shop). I adore bookstores, especially ones that are not retail chains. Bookstores, like cafes, have a certain air about them, perhaps even a mythical quality. We enter them with thoughts of a different reality, a peculiar place that's betwixt and between everyday life. An arsenal of imaginative or informative escapes safely housed under one roof. A place where one can leisurely stroll between crowded and often unorganized shelves to the heart's content. To wander and to find, almost serendipitously, a book that meets your needs. I wish I could say every bookstore experience is like that, sadly that's not the case.
Though I sincerely believe nothing can replace the bookstore experience, I confess I have made a transition I never thought I would.... I've moved to e-reading.
Though studies have shown that e-reading is a different experience from conventional reading (with a physical book), I find that is allows me to indulge in one of my favorite past times without throwing my paychecks away in bookstores. It is refreshing to be able to download masses of text that can be easily carried in one device. However, nothing is quite as frustrating as having your tablet e-reader act up when you just want to cozy up in bed and read a bit before dozing off to sleep. Even still, e-reading has allowed me to enjoy many long hours in my tiny apartment. With winter dipping well below freezing over the past week, bundling up in my bed with tea and book have been a blessed relief from the searing winter wind.
As I make my way deeper into another novel I can't help but reflect on the forgotten pleasures of solitude and quiet. Though I love the fast paced and energetic social life living in Korea has given me, I find I am eager to go home and curl up with my new books. Maybe I'm just eager to get back to my apartment so I can feel my toes again, but there is still something to be said for returning to that lost love of books. It feels like a time to sit down and live, not wallow away doing nothing, and not sitting contemplatively in idle loops of thought, but sit and enjoy the adventure locked away in words. It's a shame I can't share this love with my ESL students, it's something that comes to be quite naturally. I'm beginning to appreciate more and more the difficulty of teaching something that is second nature to you. It's like teaching somehow how to breathe or balance on one foot. Sure there is technique to it, but how do you tell someone about it? It's a difficulty that I find harder and harder to stare at as my time with my Middle School classes seem less and less fruitful. It's almost enough to make me learn Korean after being here for months and hardly learning a lick of it (but in my defense I've recently taken to learning Hangul, I can actually start pronouncing some it now!)
Yet professional and pedagogical anecdotes aside, I find that reading and books are a long neglected lover who I have come crawling back to in my hour of need. She had embraced me once more, offering worlds of wonder, words of wisdom, and knowledge beyond my wildest dreams. She has certainly changed in my time away from her, but like all old friends I feel right at home with her at my side. I have no intention of leaving her any time soon (especially if it stays this cold!)
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