Of crumbling pages and well-worn spines

Have you ever read words describing colours like wild vermillion, robin's egg blue, alizarin crimson, gold ochre, and deep cobalt; and you strain to imagine it, knowing that the colours of a vibrant soul would be exactly that? Have you ever been swept away by a whirlwind of emotions, pushed back and forth between tides of alphabets and punctuation, rolled the taste of certain phrases in your mouth because it somehow fits exactly?

Because only a good book can give you that sort of dull, aching feeling in your heart for a place that does not exist - a longing desperation for a city, town, country that no one has seen, much less felt or heard. A good book will transport you into it's dusty roads, bustling markets, scents of sandalwood and lavender and pine. Noises of bargaining shopkeepers, laughing villagers, haggling wives, the clopping of hooves swimming around your head.. Breathe in the scent of woodlands and sweet air and ancient bookshops, and get lost in a reality far, far away. Each word precious and beautiful, a writer knows which word will tug at your heartstrings and chooses with care the words to use, as delicately as a master tailor handles the finest silk. He will pull you into pools of letters that threaten to drown you and crash over you like the most ferocious of waves - and words will pull you along it's current, powerful, relentless, consuming. And at the end of every last page, he will leave you breathless. Eyes shining brightly, mind a whirlwind of newfound places and friends and adventures. That is the beauty of a good book.. It will leave you with a longing for places unseen and a desire, a hunger for more. An ache in your heart the way a lover runs her hands through familiar cloth belonging to a once-lover long gone. Time dulls but the musty familiarity doesn't fade. A book lover will never, ever be satisfied. There will always be more places and cultures and melancholy sighs of characters yet to be discovered - Always.

... And so if you have never felt those things, never shed tears over a character writen off as dead in it's story, grieved with the grieving characters in a book, cried with a character as well as for him, had your soul dance along as they danced, laughed along with their inside jokes and taken deep shivering breaths as the biting winter chill goes deep into their bones - if you have never felt sorrow, like you have just lost a good friend when a book comes to the end of it's story - then, no. No, you have never... Loved a book.