Books are your friends!
“Remember: Books are your friends!” Als au-pair pflegte ich meinen drei Sprösslingen das immer zu sagen.
Meine Beziehung zu Büchern ist immer eine freundschaftliche gewesen, vielleicht, weil ich das Gefühl hatte, dass Bücher mich nicht so enttäuschen würden wie manch ein Mensch. Bücher bedeuteten mir auch deshalb so viel, weil ich, zumindest in meinem Kopf, zu neuen Ufern aufbrechen, in andere Zeiten und Länder reisen konnte… Heute mag ich sowohl das Reisen im Kopf als auch das tatsächliche Reisen – also eine Kombination von beiden!
In einem Sprachausbildungskurs an der Uni, es hieß damals noch “Advanced Comprehension and Composition” – inzwischen nennt er sich “Professional Writing Skills”, bekamen wir einmal die Aufgabe, einen Text zu schreiben mit der Überschrift: “One thing you can’t tell by looking at me…”. Diesen Text, den ich damals schrieb, möchte ich hier wiedergeben:
One thing you can’t tell by looking at me…
… is that I’m mad about books. Whenever I see a bookstore I feel the urge to go in there. I hear this little magical voice from a book in the store window that tries to persuade me (it always succeeds in doing so): “Come on in, Ulli! You don’t have to buy me, but at least look at me. Don’t go away without having seen my wonderful cover!” And after a few seconds – maybe just one second because I’m a very spontaneous person – I go in and spend too much time looking at them, leafing through them and smelling them. Sometimes, if the book is very thin, more like a leaflet, I would even read through it while sitting or kneeling in some remote corner where nobody would find me.
Although I’m fascinated by all kinds of books, I do prefer foreign language books, that is to say, books in English and Spanish. (The latter is my second study.) Some five years ago, while working as an au-pair in the US State of Washington I discovered the biggest and most wonderful bookstore: “Barnes and Noble” in Seattle. As I entered I felt like a teeny weeny foreign species standing in awe of the many enormous bookshelves crammed full with thousands and thousands of books. Of course, I bought at least 10 of them… Don’t ask me how many books I had to send home by the end of the year!
It comes in handy that it’s just me and my mom living in our house. This way I can keep my books that I have bought through the years in three rooms. In “my” room, where I work and sleep, I only have the books that I need for my studies, that means only in the language of Shakespeare and Cervantes. If you ask me whether I have read all of my books I have to admit that I have not – but most of them. I always tell myself that I’m going to read the rest of them when I’m retired…
One last thing about me and books… I intend to write one someday… Then I’m going to write about all the things you can’t tell by looking at me… oh… and there are loads of things…