Different Loving

Different Loving: A Complete Exploration of the World of Sexual Dominance and Submission by Gloria G. Brame, Jon Jacobs, and William D. Brame 

1996

Weight: 1.8 lbs

I collect books.  I am not trying to hoard them and am happy to give them up and rehome them after reading.  It is rare that I will read the same book twice.  There are too many books and, as they say, too little time.  It is a real possibility that I could die before completing my current collection, and THAT keeps me up at night.  It keeps me up and reading anyway.  I am on a mission.  

I remember when it started.  I knew the name of every book and every author I had ever read.  I realized that I was collecting knowledge and that, in a way, I could know at least a little bit about everything.  My adolescent mind did not yet comprehend what it would be like to hold too much information and to not be able to access it all completely.  I did not know what it would feel like to almost know so many things but to not know enough to explain anything.  That is where I am at now, but it is a compulsion and a need at this point.  I must read.  I must surround myself with all the things I hope to know.  I always have a few hard copies nearby, a couple on my Kindle App, all my shelves full, and boxes of books waiting for shelves to become available.  But, if you ask me if I want a book of yours, the answer is always yes.  100 times yes.  The less you are like me and making a recommendation the better.

I love the smell of both, old and new books.  If you bury your face in one, the smell is strong but, before I bring them close, I cannot smell them at all.  I love the feel of a good trade paperback--malleable but strong.  I prefer matte covers to shiny ones.  The shiny ones feel cheap and remind me of self-publishing.  Self publishing can be a wonderful thing, but it is mostly just scary.  It seems like the less money the publisher puts into the book the more of a gamble it will be.  How elitist of me.

I think about the people we have lost and the books they never read.  If they had advanced warning, which ones did they scramble to read before they would never read again?  Sometimes, when you are very sick, reading is one of the only things you can do until you can't.  Will I regret all the time I have spent reading or will I regret that I did not read enough?

I make plans.  If my eyesight gets worse, there is always large print, or you can change the font size on a tablet.  If that is no longer useful, there are audio books.  Is there anything in the world that has not already been written?  It seems like there is an endless resource, an endless combination of words, and some combinations just make my brain crackle and come back to life.  I live for that something new.  I hunt for it constantly.