There’s something magical about the place where you read a book. Not just the pages or the story, but the smells, sounds, and people around you — they embed themselves inside the story forever. Like when I read The Bell Jar on the backseat of a rattling bus in Austin. The sun was melting into a humid evening, and I had just decided to quit my job. The book’s weight felt heavier than usual, but its words somehow lightened the chaos inside my head.

Once, I painted my living room walls in a color I called “anxious lavender” — a weird, muted purple that seemed both calming and unsettling. While the smell of paint thickened the air, I listened to Kitchen Confidential on my headphones. Anthony Bourdain’s voice was a strange comfort, a salty, honest friend reminding me that life’s messy and unpredictable, but still delicious. 

In Paris, I read Norwegian Wood on a park bench under a sky so gray it felt like the world had paused. The melancholy in Murakami’s prose matched the drizzle falling softly around me. That book wasn’t just a story — it was my shadow, a quiet companion during a lonely week. I still think of that bench every time I hear the Beatles’ song it was named after.

And there was the summer when I discovered The Secret History on a beach in Greece. The sun was so bright it almost hurt to look up, and the tension in the book pulsed like the waves hitting the shore. I was learning to balance between wanting to escape and needing to face myself. That paradox still lives between the pages.

Books are more than stories to me — they are the soundtrack and scenery of my life’s odd moments. They anchor feelings, memories, and changes. Every time I pick one up, I’m transported not only to the author’s world but back to the exact place where I first met that story.

So when people ask why I’m so sentimental about my book collection, I say it’s because every cover is a timestamp, a tiny shrine to a moment in time. And that makes even the unread ones sacred in their own way.