It has been some months since I bought books at the close-out sale of books at my local bookstore. It was a bit of a feeding frenzy, when books are priced so that I could buy them in change. Hundreds of dollars of books, at 75% discount. Each one was a jewel on the shelves, an imagined afternoon drifting lazily as I read an involving story.

I like physical books. To me, the term is redundant: a book is physical. It has been over a decade since The Kindle came out, but to me, a digital book is a bundle of information, no different than a webpage. A book is physical, it is a thing, and its existence as a thing is part of the pleasure. I like the different feels of paper texture, the many smells that books have, the way they look so organized but also unique, lined up with colorful spines. The diversity of older mass market paperbacks next to the stiff spines and glossy covers of newer trade paperbacks is like having a little time machine. Many of those books are still lined up against the wall, still in their shopping bags, ready to be read. I go and look through them, imagining each one as a little world that I can slide into at my leisure.

The problem is that a book is not just a thing. It is a process. In some ways, it is consumed, just like food. Unlike food, it takes a bit of chewing. Even the shortest book takes an afternoon. The longer ones involve days of concentration, sometimes getting bored, sometimes losing track, sometimes feeling guilty because I find my bookmark between the same pages for days or weeks. When I pick up a book and riffle my fingers through the thin, fragrant picture it seems like I am holding something that is an indelible object. Its meaning and significance seem to just be there, to be picked up or put down at leisure. But I know that when I start reading, I will wrestle with it. Even when it is fun, it will be a process, something to struggle with. I will count the pages, see how far I am progressing. Right now, it is the first of May, and I realize that I might be spinning through this backlog of whimsy when the days shorten and get cold again, and maybe even when it is time for me to move on. I want to have my cake and eat it too, to have a concrete reality I can return to, a physical thing I can hold and know is there, but I also want to have the process, to have the struggle of turning a "thing" into something that has personal meaning for me. This is not true only of books, but the dreams that looked so simple on the shelf, that are now staring at me and waiting to be "done", are one of the clearest signs I can have of it.