I have not written yet about my love affair with books. It is a significant relationship in my life, and one deserving of a digital place in this ragtag journal of mine. Now as with any relationship, there has been conflict, drama, friction, fiction, reconciliation, and occasionally page tearing. But it has been so very rewarding, and I predict we will grow old together.

It started in college when I began taking philosophy classes. After the intro course, the book lists on the syllabi were increasingly longer and more prestigious: the complete compilation of Aristotle’s works; Sarte’s Essays in Existentialism; Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil; Heidegger’s Being and Time (might as well have been in German); etc. As they piled up on my shelf, I began to take pleasure in the intellectual aura they gave my room in the basement of our dilapidated college house. I realize now that this was mostly a superficial interest in looking smart, but it wasn’t long before I actually wanted to be smart. Naturally class helped me along—my professors constantly planting questions and ideas into my mind that would eventually lead to philosophical contemplation. Overall I think just the proximity of the books combined with the engaging discussions inspired in me a newfound interest in knowledge that has since become sincere—or in other words, I pursue knowledge now mostly in the belief that it will make me happier and better able to contribute to the lives of others. But at that time, my new interest expressed itself most clearly in my acquisition of what I perceived as the most effective medium of knowledge: books, and the words within.

Between my junior year of college and just the other day, I have purchased hundreds. Philosophy, history, psychology, classic literature, Pulitzer Prize winners, biographies, and the complete collector’s edition of Calvin and Hobbes (I should footnote here that my love of Calvin and Hobbes preceded my love of Philosophy, and certainly contributed to my love for reading, if not the development of my personality) (I should further note that this edition was a birthday gift from my loving wife, who so graciously puts up with my book buying habit, and did not leave me when I asked to her to buy me a very expensive set of comic books). Many of my books sit unread, I admit. But that will slowly change, and until then they will occupy an honorable place in my growing personal library. Even now, while my purchasing volume has slowed considerably, I can hardly pass up a bookstore I’ve never been in, and I never pass up a book sale unless the selection is completely meritless. My appreciation for books has matured (in that I no longer hope that their strategic position on the shelf will appear as some sort of mental resume to my friends and guests), but I am still entranced by their physical attributes: the smell of a new book (or a really old book), the crispness of their pages, the regal stature of an Easton Press leather bound, their soldierly appearance when you line them up, spines outward—I love it all. I love it because I know what books represent, and this makes them so much more meaningful.

What every book represents, in my opinion, is the ability of language to influence human life. Language is, in a way, everything. It defines everything, it gives an identity to all characters and qualities. It gives human emotion a means of communication beyond physical touch. Language can also create realities that exist only in words. Most importantly, it is the foundational structure relied on by our mental lives. And knowledge relies on language for its transmission—sometimes in a simple and plain manner, other times guarded by a steep vocabulary or an artistic form. Regardless, a good book, one that through all the tools of the linguistic arts, or through creative genius, or through the mere telling of the truth, leaves the reader in a different state than it found them is a wonderfully powerful thing. And when you are first or finally moved by a book, you gain a freedom that is so simple to maintain.

On the other hand, as Sean Maguire said to one Will Hunting, “I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some (expletive) book—unless you want to talk about you.” And therein lies the limitations of a book. They can’t replace the real thing (usually).