The spine, the collar, the dusty ideas waiting in the old book sitting in front of me. I feel like a hero, I’m rescuing this book – taking it from its broken shelf in the used section to welcome it into my own room where I’ll pore over it until I’ve seen everything that lies between its covers. Everything in it being added to the library that already bounces around my head as my eyes pass over the pages. I’m hoping to find a bit more truth, a bit more meaning.

This is an ode, a thank you, and an apology to both to the books that I haven’t read and the books that I never will read. An ode to honour them. A thank you for teaching me, for giving me an escape, for allowing me to defy gravity and walk in the mind of another person for a time. An apology because for every book that I do find, there is a book to the left and right of it that I don’t pick up, a book that I’m not a hero for, a book with ideas that I am missing out on. Some of these books represent all that is left of the minds of great men and women – great people. Who am I to allow them to go to waste?

To the books I haven’t read: No matter who you may be written by: I thank you and await your arrival patiently. I will sit in wait until your flashy cover or your worn yellow pages draws me to you. I will wait to decipher the scratched annotation left by your last savior, to pull the wisdom from the pages that not only you have to give but the wisdom as seen through the eyes of your previous reader.

To the books I haven’t read: I have some requests. Please teach me, keep me awake, and make a long day short and a short day full of adventure. Please hurt me to finish you – make me dread that final page turn. Please have a cheesy last line, a dedication to the love ones who helped your existence become a reality, and a message that will resonate within me for years and make me want to share you with every person I come across. Show me how another person thought, how they felt, and how they hurt. Let me feel the things your authors felt as they wrote this for future audiences to learn and grow from so that I may be a fuller person. Please whisk me away and be my hero as much as I want to be yours. Let’s save each other – add yourself to my library and I’ll give you a shelf to rest on where your pages will be flipped through repeatedly. Every idea you have hidden will be pondered and wrestled with.

To the books I haven’t read: I have one final request. Please hurry. My shelf, mind, and heart are not yet full, so find your way to me.