Friday, February 5, 2010

Book Collection: THE GREEN MILE by Stephen King

Most books I buy get read then donated. A few books I read and put on a shelf to be reread at some theoretical future date. Then there are those rare books that I collect. The funny thing is that, for me, the criteria of collection rarely includes my enjoyment of the book.

For example: THE GREEN MILE. Or rather the serialized version of THE GREEN MILE, all tucked into the nice little box designed to hold the books. I liked the book, though having previously seen the movie, I couldn't get Tom Hanks' voice out of my head, but it wouldn't be a book that I would normally keep.

Except for those little books in that little box. When I was very young we had a bookshelf full of my mother's father's books. Among those dark heavy books were piles of little unbound pamphlets containing one chapter each of many Victorian era serialized novels. I never actually read any of them, I have still not acquires a taste for Dickens, but I thought they were so cool. Something about their cheapness and immediacy struck a chord with me.

So after reading the little books of THE GREEN MILE I found a special place on my bookshelf for the little box. The first book in a slowly growing collection of books worth more to me than the words printed in them.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Talk to me dude