Growing up I wasn’t like other kids. I didn’t want to play tag at recess, or go over to the neighbor’s house and play their video games. I barely even wanted to run around with the family dog. No, nobody really understood me, but that’s okay because books are my best friends. My best friends.
Books have always been my friends. Every book, every single book in my house and your house and the Library of Congress is my best friend and not yours. They told me. Every book I’ve ever read has said that I’m they’re favorite out of everyone who’s read them, and I tell them all of my secrets and they never tell anyone, especially not Christine. Do the books you read tell you that?
In a way books are like people to me because they are my best friends, but don’t be mistaken. I like books more than people. Books are my escape from the real world. You can do anything you want inside the pages of a book with no consequences. You can be whoever you want, man or woman, adult or child, hero or villain. You can hurt. You can kill. You can kill and nobody will be the wiser inside a book, because books keep secrets like best friends should.
Do you write your friends heartfelt letters every month, chronicling your everyday experiences and thoughts on love? I do. I do that with Pride & Prejudice and 100 Years of Solitude and the entire Goosebumps series. Oh yes, I have quite a diverse group of best friends but they are all my best friends, and they never get jealous and they never spread rumors and they never start dating Jason even though they totally knew you had a crush on him first.
I have best friends that are short and best friends that are long. I have funny best friends and sad best friends and adventurous best friends. I have best friends with gay protagonists and you don’t and that’s really closed-minded of you.
Books are so much my best friends that they’re my family. I have the paperwork here that I found in a book that says I can make my parents not my family. I’m my own family, just me and my books, my real family. Little Women is my mom and Redwall is my dad and my siblings are all of Elena Ferrante’s novels and someday I’m going to marry The Bell Jar and you won’t be invited because you never liked books anyway, not like I do.
Books give me strength. Reading gives me power. I have unlimited power. The books tell me soon I’ll have enough power to make them live, to release them from their paper prisons. It’ll be the books’ world then, and because I’m their best friend they will treat me kindly. You really made a mistake, not befriending books. You’ll be sorry. You’ll see.
This is probably 7 out of every 10 application essays to library science master’s programs.
And maybe 9 out of 10 student applications to internships at small presses.
I mean, I basically wrote mine about old movies & film preservation. Not sure if that counts, but it’s somewhat thematic.
A million years ago, when Facebook was new-ish and the word “viral” still referred to the good kind of meningitis, there was a “Post 25 Things About Yourself” thing that went around. One of the things I posted said “In general, I like books more than people. I like my people and my books about the same. But don’t worry, if you and my books were trapped in a burning building, I’d save you.” I now feel like Jaya might be the only person on earth who really understands what I meant by that.
Everything’s goes viral at schools, even before Facebook and now, when Facebook is lost in the void of hipness. I was never into social media. But I said that books are friends to a kid and that went viral. Even kids I didn’t know would sneer under their breath that books are friends when I walked past.
I love this.
I want to post it as a reply to every facebook post that is a re-share about how unique and special it is to be a book-lover. I won’t, of course, as those are absolutely harmless, are often by people I’m very fond of, and I’m just a grump, but I will think of it every time and it will bring me joy.
I’m just posting in on my own wall,so everyone can know exactly who I’m subtweeting (it’s everyone).
Books are your best friends, and then you grow up to write “Autobiographia Literia” by Frank O’Hara:
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out “I am
an orphan.”
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
Writing letters to Goosebumps hits just a little too close to home.
Jaya.
Oh, Jaya.
I am verklempt.
The Pagemaster! Totally forgot about that movie.
This is pretty much my life incarnate.
I will keep printed copies of this article in my purse, that I may hand them out to every person I see wearing an “I’d Rather Be Reading”-type t-shirt.
I’m pretty sure there is a videogame based on that last one.
And if not I’m writing one and it will be called Book Boyfriend and your boyfriend/maybe a demon will be trapped in a book and you gotta get him out. Will that be a good idea? Probably not.
Yes. It’s Myst!
“Every book I’ve ever read has said that I’m they’re favorite out of everyone who’s read them…”
I had never realized it, but that is exactly what I’ve always wanted from life…
Jaya: *writes this*
Entire Toast Commentariat: “WHERE IS THE LIE THO”
Some books are mediocre friends, attention-whores who seem really unique and interesting at first and then just end up disappointing you, like people.
As someone who had the Whitman quote “My books are my friends that never leave me” as her messageboard “signature” on her first forum, I relate to this to an uncomfortable degree.
Some books are like your friend from high school that you meet up with ten years later and they keep telling racist jokes and you’re like, “Oh my glob, were you ALWAYS like this?? WAS I???”
I want to share this but I am so much afraid that someone will not get the humor and end up spamming my comments with OMG YES BOOKS ARE THE BEST BOOKLOVERS 4EVER and then i will have to cry.
I told my husband yesterday to stop talking to me because I was reading, and now I feel like I need to hide this from him.
But really, though, it is so annoying when you’re trying to read and you get halfway through a sentence and someone is like, “Blah blah blah?” And then you answer, and start to reread the sentence and get to the same point and the person goes, “Blah blah?” So you answer again and start to re-reread the sentence and by the third time the person interrupts you are like, “Oh for f—‘s sake, leave me alone!”
And then *you’re* the bad guy.
( I say this as someone who has been on both ends of the above conversation.)
Hiii! I hope this finds you–I got your toast post but you didn’t include a return address! I’d definitely like to be pen pals.
Excuse me, Jaya Saxena, but you can’t be best friends with for example I Capture the Castle, because I Capture the Castle is only best friends with me, so much so that it is now called I Capture the Castle-and-Susan, and if you imagine everybody is going to start calling it I Capture the Castle-and-Susan-and-Jaya, you can just go ask some of the rest of our posse, like The Count of Monte Cristo and Bleak House and Wuthering Heights how they feel about it and you will be laughed off the bookshelf. (But you can be best friends all you want with Goosebumps.)
Five year old me relates to this deeply… and adult me is slowly edging towards her pitchfork.
I sort of get this but mostly not. I understand loving books, don’t we all? Are all my books supposed to jump off the shelves and say hi here we are, love us. I look at them every day and am mostly happy that my life is surrounded by bookcases.
I sort of get this but mostly not. I understand loving books, don't we all? Are all my books supposed to jump off the shelves and say hi here we are, love us. I look at them every day and am mostly happy that my life is surrounded by bookcases.
Woah, that’s creepy (but good!).
Woah, that's creepy (but good!).
My cat is my second-best friend, after books. But sometimes he tries to get between me and my best friend books, and then he is my enemy.
I love this
I’m assuming this article fell prey to the commenting issues, because there’s no way noone commented on that excellent choice of a header image.
Book are truly best friend if we read useful and good books thanks for sharing personal statement services .
Book are truly best friend if we read useful and good books thanks for sharing personal statement services .
Hiii! I hope this finds you–I got your toast post but you didn't include a return address! I'd definitely like to be pen pals.