Falling In Love, By The Book

Where do bibliophiles exchange sweet nothings?

- Karla Marie-Rose Derus

I WAS ALWAYS a reader. As a kid, I walked to the library several times a week and stayed up late reading with a torch. I checked out so many books and returned them so quickly the librarian once snapped, “Don’t take home so many books if you’re not going to read them all.”

“But I did read them all,” I said back.

I did my undergraduate degree in English and went on to get a master’s in literature. When I created my online dating profile, I made my screen name “missbibliophile52598.” Filling out the “favourite books” section, I let my taste in literature speak for me: One Hundred Years of Solitude, A Moveable Feast, White Teeth, The Namesake, The Known World, The God of Small Things, How to Read the Air.

But I realised it had been more than two years since I had read most of those titles. I had stopped reading gradually, the way one heals or dies. I tried to maintain my bookish persona. I joined book clubs that I never attended. I requested a library book everyone was reading, only to return it unread.

I still loved the idea of reading. Whenever I found a bookstore, I would linger between the shelves for hours as if catching up with old friends, picking out volumes I had read and buying new ones. But it was clear to me: I was becoming a person I did not know.