Falling in Love: Books

Book love is much like any other love. We fall in love with them, sometimes immediately, sometimes it takes reading a few chapters, and sometimes it takes reading them more than once.

That last one is the kind of book love I have most recently experienced and it took me completely by surprise. As I was carefully working on one of our upcoming books, Annamanda, I realized I had fallen in love with it. Which was surprising because I did not like the book the first time I read it.

It was long. Like 600 pages long. And it took place in/around New Madrid around the time of the 1811-1812 earthquakes and was written as people would have talked back then. And there was a lot about religion (although the book itself is not about religion). I had a hard time relating to it. I had a hard time reading it in general because it was so long.

My boss and I have worked with this book a lot. It's not nearly as close to being done as I'd like, but I've gotten quite a bit of say in the page design and coming up with ideas for the cover. I feel as though this book has become a part of me. And every time I work on it, I fall in love with it a little more. I get excited every time I get to work on it. And I get anxious when there are other things I have to do instead of working on it. 

It's a beautiful book (which we have shortened some) and I just can't wait to see the finished project and hold it in my hands. I think my biggest fear right now is not getting to finish it before I leave. (I've decided that I'm going to leave at the end of the semester, whether I have another job or not.) While there are many things about my job that I don't really enjoy (mainly anything that deals with numbers or budgets or money), working on the books (even the ones I don't like very much) is the very best part. Seeing a book go from text on recycled paper with lots of editing marks and notes on it to the finished product is one of the best things in the world. There are quite a few other books we have scheduled for the spring and it makes me incredibly sad that I won't get to work on them (although since I'll still be going to school here, I'll at least get to see the finished product!). 

Book love is one of the best kinds of love for so many reasons and in so many ways. I think that actually working on books makes it even stronger. And I know that there are some books that I have worked on and fallen in love with that I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't worked on them...some I probably wouldn't even have considered reading at all. 

It's the reason I love books and the reason I love what I do and the reason I'm reluctant to leave. It makes me incredibly sad to know that I probably won't have a job in the near future that even deals with books at all, let alone helping to create them.