Books are like seeds: they come to life when you read them, and grow spines and leaves. I need trees around me as I need books around me, so building bookshelves is something like planting trees.
Roger Deakin, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm (London: Penguin, 2009), p. 24.
I too need trees around me when I read, but I also need water. Books are like seeds indeed and water brings them to life. I read in the water - or at least in the proximity of water - whenever I can: in the bath (at home or at the local onsen), in the sauna, in the rain, in the snow... All my books, except for library ones and those borrowed from friends, bear the imprint of the place where I read them. They are vital to my sense of place.
The books undergo amazing metamorphoses and get all creased and dog-eared - and strangely light. Some even develop fungi, like a living organism, a tree.
And so does my heart.
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