The Weight of Books

Nothing is heavier than books. Not granite, not lead, not McDonald's regulars, not even the 4 liters of water that my Japanese friend's parents-in-law insisted on taking to Germany because they didn't trust the local supply. The only time I've ever paid extra for luggage on a plane was due to books. Psychology books, which it seems have to be heavy due to some bizarre perceived correlation between weight and worth. My maternal grandfather was a collector of books. In particular fully illustrated books on birds and leather bound 'complete works of....'. I grew up surrounded by books because my mother had inherited her father's love of them; and after he died she also inherited his books, which my father built numerous capacious shelves for (without a spirit level he liked to boast). The shelves groaned audibly and I swear the house sunk an inch or two for each year we lived there.
     E-book readers have helped keep my luggage within the ever more strictly enforced airline weight limits, but in one important way they haven't made books lighter. I had a dream last night that prompted this post. I was back at university and I went to see a lecturer for a consultation about a piece of coursework I had submitted. He was an amalgamation of the nightmare head of department that Tony bests in the second season of Skins and Matt the killer from Top of the Lake. I got short shrift in the consultation and was gathering my books afterwards, but there seemed to be an increasing number of them, which I couldn't lift. An element of the dream was the recurring dread that I am unprepared for an exam and it is getting too late to catch up. I woke up feeling bad from the dream, but with a growing relief as I awoke to the reality that such fears are behind me. But what does the books being heavy signify?
     For me it's the weight of reverence that books engender. I grew up thinking it was a crime to mark a page by turning down the corner, and that not finishing a book I had started was a potentially cataclysmic failure of self-discipline with the added sin of disrespect to the author (to whose stature I could only dimly aspire). A year ago I finished my third degree (in Psychology you may have guessed). I spent too large a part of the following months getting a place on the Phd program and was absolutely convinced that's how I wanted to spend the next five years....until I wasn't. I confronted my misgivings and changed my mind. I'm going to coach, and teach (as far as possible unencumbered by textbooks) and I'm only going to read what I want to read, which doesn't mean not tackling the tough stuff if it seems like it will reward the effort. I've got my Kindle, and a variety of novels and tomes weighing down my Ikea shelves, but the weight of books is lifting month by month and I feel like our old house, rising again from the earth, lighter, more playful, less reverent.