Consolation of Books

Emptiness, hurt, and bleakness is what I feel all the time. I don’t want to face these feelings anymore, I don’t have the strength to face these things anymore. Retreating within myself I stop doing the things make me happy. I stop laughing, singing, but most importantly I stopped loving to read books. I began to think of reading as chore, just a task that I must complete in homework. Just bunches of knowledge or information that, for the most part, was useless. When am I ever going truly need all of this knowledge? It’s not as though I’m going to walk into a job interview for being in the health field and they ask “Well Ms. Vansandt, have you read Plato’s Apology?” And I internally cringe before forcing out the words, “No sir, I actually have not ever read that specific work.”. His expression then noticeably changes to a sour countenance, “Well then we have nothing else to discuss.”. This would never realistically happen, that would be just silly, right?

Without the love of reading and learning I begin to thoughtlessly go through the motions of everyday life. My day consisted of: eating, sleeping, and studying. That was all I did. No more going into different lands, falling in love with fictional places, or being challenged by a thought provoking passage. I spend almost all my time in the library now. The things I love most about the library is how quiet, secluded, and warm it is. When I enter I make my way to the farthest back corner of the building where I cannot be seen by even one person. I place my things at the desk and begin to study, focusing until my concentration is broken by a voice appearing right beside me suddenly. “This is an amazing read right here, Erin” I hear a man say in a soft tone while gesturing to a very worn, brown, leather book. Looking up from my notes I see a tall man standing where there was only carpet seconds before. “Where did you come from?” I finally manage to stutter out, after getting over my initial surprise. Smirking at my question he responds, “I think the better question, would be to ask who I am, my dear. Look at me, tell me what you see”. He takes a step back so I can truly see him in his entirety; outfit and all. Looking at his outfit I see the purple coat first. He wears an outfit that is full of life and speaks of a certain timelessness to it. His hair is hidden by the black top hat with purple ribbon around it, but curls peek out from underneath the edges of the hat. His eyes show endless wisdom and patience, if you didn’t believe the saying about the eyes being the window to the soul, your mind would be changed by now. “So” he began to speak, “have you thought of a guess as to who I might be?” I gazed at him, “Well I can’t quite say without having basically judged a book by its cover, and that’s never a good thing to do.”

“Why yes, you are quite right!” His eyes glinted of mischief in that moment, before taking his top hat from his head and bowing in the manner of decades ago. “It is a pleasure to finally become formally acquainted with you Erin. You have known me all your life, just not in this form, for I take on the form of many ideas. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am the Gentlemen Book.” Finally all these traits I had been noticing about him all fit together and made perfect sense! Feeling confused as to why I was the person he came to speak to, I ask “So what made you come here to meet me?”. Responding to me he says, “Well I could sense your distress when you stopped enjoying reading, which is quite obviously a bad sign. I wanted to talk to you about how I can get you through most any difficulty you are facing and teach you almost anything you need to learn.” Growing up I always enjoyed learning new things and becoming a part of each fascinating story, but as I got older I began to  face more strife and hardships than I had ever faced before. I completely stopped finding joy in reading and stopped being happy in general honestly. “My eyes are wet with tears and the poems are those/ that only grieving Muses would would prompt me to compose”. (Boethius 1.1) Gentlemen Book just looked at me with this look of pity. “You just wouldn’t understand what I am feeling Gentlemen Book.”

He sadly smiled at hearing me say this before responding, “Don’t you remember reading Sarah Dessen’s Saint Anything? Where Sydney isn’t seen by anyone and she is faced with deciding what she believes and must stand for?” His voice raising as he became even more passionate about what he was saying, “Don’t you know that I felt every single pang in her heart throughout the story? Don’t you understand that I feel the loss Aeneas’ felt in Virgil’s The Aeneid?”. I quietly stood there soaking in what had just been said. I felt guilty for not having been thoughtful enough to realize that he had felt all the pains of every single story. “But my real point is to help you remember how wonderful the worlds are that you can visit through my stories. The fascinating conclusions and beliefs you can come to through reading the words of some of the wisest people. Don’t you remember the wonderful colors in Idris in Cassandra Clare’s The Shadowhunter Series or how wonderful India seemed through Kelsey’s eyes in The Tiger’s Curse by Colleen Houck?” Flashbacks of how much I loved those characters, those worlds, the happiness I felt in their triumphs rushed back to me. I remember just how lovely the opportunities offered to me by books are.

Gentlemen Book has reminded me of all the amazing attributes about books like learning and growing that you can get from them. The escape they offer into any other life you want to live, even if for only a few moments. The love, patience, wisdom, and understanding you can get from these pages. Books aren’t just a means of useless knowledge or children’s stories, they are a means to convey some of the deepest thoughts that come from the mind and the heart. Books are a way to help someone experience how to make their imagination create entire worlds within their mind. Without books, I think that humanity would become quite lost.