About books.

I love my bookshelf. It's like my own private bookstore in which, by the way, I can and preferably will spend at least one hour when I happen to enter in. Fullfilling of my perfect downtown-day in Helsinki is to spend a peaceful, un-rushed hour or two in the Academical Bookshop, as I did once again last weekend when I was there. Occationally I shop clothes and stuff too, like any other girl, but even more I am unavoidably attracted by the large English fiction section of this particular store. One more Jane Austen left with me the shop that afternoon and brought one more reason to stand in front of my bookshelf in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep.

I love my bookshelf and I tend to stand for quite a while sometimes in front of it, just watching my books. It's like reading all of those at the same time again, and the feeling is a resemblance of the one I get while wandering about in bookstores. I don't like snobbing with my books and readings, and my small collection includes everything from Dickens to Torey Hayden, from Noam Chomsky to J.K. Rowling, from Cuban revolution to old-fashioned girls' novels, and like mother her children, I love them all however fashionable and intellectual or non they are in the eyes of those who know things. The fish of the opposite shore (is that not a great translation for a "vastarannan kiiski"? Just made it up.) in me makes sure I do not go with the flow even in my readings - I have not yet read Hotakainen's Juoksuhaudantie, just because it was so extremely popular at the time I went to writer's school; and hey if somewhere, there one was suppoused to know all the books that were in. Well I wasn't. Maybe the hype has faded by now, though, so I could finally check it out. After all, Finlandia-rewarded books should be read by someone wishing to be a writer someday, no?

I read way too little and feel helplessly unsophisticated when talking to some of my friends - like the one who owns a bookshelf of several metres and literally has books from floor to ceiling in it and still cannot fit everything in. Or another one who read everything important before she even graduated from high school. I spend a lot of time thinking about reading when I should just get myself into it. Not because I would be obligated to do it though, just because I really want to.

And so, when I cannot sleep, I stand in front of my bookshelf in the middle of the night. No mind so sad or full of thoughts that could not be comforted by a succesful combination of ink and paper in covers.