I have a confession to make.
I am a time traveler. You are—most likely—a time traveler, too. Don’t look at me like that! I’m not crazy, we really *are* time travelers! We may not disappear as spectacularly (or nakedly) as Henry in the Time Traveler’s wife, or in a rockin’ DeLorean with Michael J Fox, but the truth is this: lifelong readers don’t need machines to go back in time. We need only to pick up a copy of a well loved (or even loathed) book, and we’re instantly transported back to when we first fell into its pages.
You all know the “where were you” questions that everyone asks:
“Where were you on September 11, 2001?”
“Where were you when they found O.J. Not Guilty?”
But you, dear reader, have a whole other set of memory triggers. What if I asked you these:
“Where were you when you first met Harry Potter?”
“Where were you when Edward took Bella to the meadow?”
“Where were you when Margaret first asked God if he was there?”
Do you remember? I do. Sometimes the answer is actually a place. Reading the first few chapters of Twilight takes me back to a March afternoon I spent with the windows open sprawled out on my bed. Sometimes the answer is more of an era. I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when my now husband and I were planning our wedding, and reading it is like looking in the pensieve at a time when my thoughts were occupied with frosting flavors and bridesmaid dresses.
This happened to me tonight when I was browsing my shelves trying to decide which book to review. I confess that I haven’t read many new books lately, most of my free time goes into writing my own novel, and I couldn’t decide on a recent read to gush about. Then my eyes fell on a very worn out paperback spine with a barely legible title: Remember Me by Christopher Pike. The sight alone made me smile.
Don’t misunderstand me, I love new books—adore new characters—but books long cherished are sacred. Delving back into them triggers a longing for the way books used to make me feel, before I had read hundreds of them, when stories themselves were novelties, and I first fell in love with reading. Christopher Pike was my first literary obsession, and when I return to the first books I became obsessed with, I'm taken back in time. It’s my 12th birthday, and I’ve taken all $150 of my birthday money to half price books and spent every last penny of it on books.. Im back in the chaise lounge beside the pool, my face not getting tan with the rest of my body because the book is blocking the sun. I’m the freshman aide in gym class, spending the class periods in the locker room sprawled out on the uncomfortable bench oblivious to the pain in my back and the odor of smelly socks because I’m somewhere very far away absorbed in a story I already know by heart. I'm in the backseat of my Mom's car, barely registering her irritation with me because I haven't heard a word of her twenty minute speech about our family's vacation plans. I'm back in college, not studying for tomorrow morning's A&P final because I finally unpacked that last box in my dorm room and found a book that had been read so many times that the cover was no longer attached to the pages. I love this book. I hold it, and I remember. I open it, and I’m scattered in time. Favorite books remind us of who we are better than our own handwritten journals could ever hope to.
So tell me, what books take you back? When you time travel, where do you go? What books are you reading now that will someday bring you back to this day and grow a smile on the face of a much older you?