Batty for Books

I love books.

It’s a common statement – perhaps even a cliché – but I feel like it’s a lesser known fact about me. When I was growing up, it was my sister that was considered the avid reader. Laurie was the one that got the “Book Lady” tote bags, the autographed book release posters, and the bookstore jobs. People knew I liked to read, too, but it wasn’t part of my identity the way it was a part of hers.

I suppose I can understand why things ended up this way. Laurie is a speed reader. She can read a book a day, easy. In fact, she’s probably read more books by now than I will read in my lifetime. She skims through them, understanding the plot and main points if not every single subtle nuance.

I, on the other hand, plod through books like I am wading through quicksand. I read every single word and contemplate the meaning of every single sentence. I’m forever flipping back to reread parts that have suddenly become more important or to make sure I have all the characters and the chronology straight in my head. When I finish a book, I know the story and characters intimately, at least until the details are pushed out of my memory by a new book. It takes me a long time to read a book, even the easy ones – and a hard read will take me over a month sometimes. This methodical technique of complete comprehension is probably one of the things that makes me so good at my job.

My slow, careful reading style also has another effect: my complete and total immersion into the world of a story. When I’m reading a book, particularly one I really like, the real world around me starts to face away. I see the setting and characters, and almost hear them speaking. I have some sort of vague awareness of the things going on around me; I’ll respond if someone says my name, but I usually have to ask people to repeat any questions they ask me. Reading is almost time travel to me.

Mostly, I love this about myself. I like being able to completely abandon the real world, if only temporarily, anytime I want. But this time-travel phenomenon also has an unexpected consequence that may get me into trouble one day. You see, when I’m deep into a good book, I never completely come back from the story world, even when I’m not reading. My habit of completely immersing myself into the story affects the way I react to things in the real world.

Let me give you a few examples from the book I’m reading right now. It’s a thousand-page historical fiction novel about life in 14th-century England. About halfway through the book, my favorite character, Caris, was accused of practicing witchcraft. It terrified her – witchcraft was both impossible to prove and impossible to disprove in those days, and superstitions usually won out. Almost any woman who was accused of witchcraft ended up being sentenced to death. Caris only narrowly escaped this fate herself. She confessed her sins and her death sentence was suspended so long as she took vows and became a nun. It was a horrible sacrifice for her, as she was in love and supposed to be married days later.

Reading that part of the story made me both sad for Caris and scared for women in general. But not just the women in the story – all women, then and now, including myself. A couple of days later, I was walking home from the train stop, and it started to rain. I instinctively reached for my hood. But then I hesitated as I remembered which coat I was wearing. It’s a blue corduroy jacket, and on the back are sewn white patches that spell “WICH,” an acronym for Wizards In CHicago, for an informal Harry Potter fan club of which I am a member. Usually the patches are hidden by the hood, but putting the hood up would expose them. As I thought about that, I remembered Caris and her trial, and I worried that the wrong person would see the patches and accuse me of being a witch. I walked the rest of the way home letting the rain soak my hair and face. I was too afraid to put the hood up.

Nuts, right? First of all, the likelihood of anyone even noticing the patches was slim. Second, even if anyone did, I doubt his or her first thought would be to accuse me of witchcraft, as it is 2009 and generally accepted that witchcraft is not possible. Third, even if some person DID accuse me of being a witch, there’s no way I would be sentenced to death. I know all those things, yet the world of the story has become so real for me that I couldn’t quite shake the fear.

Later in the book, the plague strikes the village and half of the population dies. The people become paranoid and fearful, and every sniffle and sneeze is looked upon with dread. Hence, paranoia struck me, too. I was at work one day last week, and I overheard one of my coworkers say to another something as mundane as, “How are you feeling?” My first, fleeting thought? “Oh, no, I hope he doesn’t have the plague!” I quickly quashed that thought before I said anything foolish, but I acknowledge that I thought it, anyway. Even though I was at work, reading about exponential regression, a part of me was still in Kingsbridge, England, in 1337.

As I said before, even though I like how deeply involved I get into book, I worry that someday I will say something completely batty and be locked up for life. Sometimes, I don’t quash my reactions so easily. Yesterday, at the end of my lunch break, I read a passage from the book where one of the male characters does something unforgivably selfish and cowardly. Before I could stop myself, I slammed the book closed and said, “Even in the 14th century, men were stupid.”

No one who overheard seemed to think I was crazy. Lucky for me, I suppose, that some things never change.