True Love

I thought I would get philosophical (for a change!) and ask what it means to love a book. I often hear the phrase: “I liked it but I didn’t love it”, applied to a book. It surprises me to hear the word love so selectively applied to a book when it is so easily bandied about otherwise: “I love these potato chips.” It seems that we have more reverence for the word “love” when we refer to a book. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just my own inner desire to save the preciousness of the word by using it only when I believe it to be true love. It seems to me that love for a book entails both the rapture of first love and the commitment of forever love. If that is the case, no wonder I find it hard to love just any book. By “rapture of first love” I mean that recognition of the book’s beauty, its goodness, its literary qualities all of which are experienced in a kind of rapture, a losing of myself in the world of the book. (Sounds very much like falling in love for a person, doesn’t it?). By “Commitment of forever love” I mean that I choose, that I select and prefer this book to the many other books I have read. It means that the book is now a part of me and I a part of it. It means that I don’t want to leave it, that even as I finish reading it, I already want to return it. It means that along with the passion of the initial rapture there is also a peace that is intuitively recognized as lasting. This is true love for me. I only want to add that true love is subjective. There are “classics” that I don’t love and there are what many would consider poorly written books that I love with all my heart. With these last kind there is a recognition of souls that takes places that pierces through the surface. May our hearts be always full of love.