Because I can hold an object in my hand that I can turn over and bend and crease and fold and mark up at my leisure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I have an excuse for staying up too late.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I adore looking at them on my shelf in whatever configuration they happen to find themselves in that particular day.\u00a0I can rearrange them whenever I get bored: by author, color, genre, height, or wherever they happen to fit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I sound smart when I bring them up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I sound smarter than I actually am when I say how many books I\u2019ve read.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I love the sound of words on my tongue, even when they aren\u2019t mine and I don\u2019t say them out loud.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because they are beautiful objects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because hearing a friend tell me that the book I lent them was exactly what they needed in that moment makes my heart warm.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I know telling a friend that the book they lent me was exactly what I needed in that moment will make their heart feel warm.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I get into arguments about how my interpretation of events is the correct one with people whom I deeply respect but are wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because sometimes I forget I\u2019m even reading at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I didn\u2019t have many friends growing up, so I had to find my solace with the characters sandwiched between card stock flaps, and that was fine with me.<\/span><\/p>\n Because I want to find transcendence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I can tell a lot about a person based on what books they read.<\/span><\/p>\n Because I love the idea of having a library that will contain thousands of books that will be stacked on my bedside table, falling off of shelves, and on every available surface of the house by the time I die.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because they make me feel less alone.<\/span><\/p>\n Because they make me feel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because my ideal date is going to a caf\u00e9 and then a bookstore. It becomes a great date if he buys me a book.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because they smell like history and possibility, ink and paper, and it\u2019s intoxicating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I get to inhabit a life just as complex and emotionally full as my own that may not even be real.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I want to create my own book someday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I\u2019m good at reading and analyzing them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because sometimes I open up a book I haven\u2019t read in many years and am greeted by the remainders of the person I was when I first read it. She is a person I may not be anymore but can still recognize by her comments and doodles in the margin, and I get to remember her, even if I disagree with her opinions on Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because they are statements of permanence, marks of art and self that will forever exist in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because they make for good conversation starters.<\/span><\/p>\n Because I feel like I\u2019m participating in some unspoken grand tradition when I read a good book, like I\u2019m contributing to the history of art and importance by witnessing it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because I just do. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ana Hein \/\/ Blog Writer Because I can run my hand down their spines in the bookstore and peace falls over me. I imagine all the people that have also…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":1327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-generalinformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2020\/03\/Why-I-Love-Books-pic-1-300x216.jpg\")
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