There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away 

_ Emily Dickinson

There comes a point in every bibliophile’s life when someone has the nerve to utter the words “you have enough books”.  My usual response to such an absurd claim is a roll of the eyes followed by “tell me another lie”.  Books are my Achilles’ heel.  Whenever I enter a store, my first impulse is to search for any signs of a book section, then reluctantly drag myself towards the grocery aisles.  Some may describe my condition as an addiction, I personally prefer the term ‘passion’.  

One may venture to ask as to why I feel the need to purchase so many books.  While there are countless reasons whirling within my mind, the most apparent is my undeniable love for literature.  I first unearthed my passion for reading at the impressionable and awkward age of twelve.  Books became my escape from the clambering chaos of middle school drama.  They offered to take me to new and mystical places where all of my adolescent struggles melted further away with each chapter that I read.

I have traveled to such marvelous lands just by simply opening a book.  I have stumbled through the wardrobe and into Narnia with Lucy and I have also been sorted by into the Ravenclaw house by the sorting hat at Hogwarts.  My imagination has been all across the globe, and has embarked upon many galactic missions.  A decade has passed, and my literary passport is marked up and ever-growing.   There is a certain magic which only the art of reading can invoke in the heart of a bookworm.  An enthralling sort of magic that sweeps us off our feet and into a world unknown to us. 

This magic that I speak of is a catalyst for my literary passion.  I possess an unwavering desire to seek and explore the strange and the lovely elements of some fantastical and fictional world.  My mind feeds off of such wonderful tales of adventure.  The next time a soul has the gal to tell me I have enough books, I will simply stare and say “I have so many more places I wish to travel”.