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A Reader’s Christmas

Jeff O'Neal

CEO and co-founder

Jeff O'Neal is the executive editor of Book Riot and Panels. He also co-hosts The Book Riot Podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @thejeffoneal.

[I wrote this post on my personal blog in October for our Book-Nerd Out contest. It’s a Christmas story, so I thought it would be appropriate for today. I hope this day finds you warm, safe, and jolly -JO]

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On Christmas eve, 1997, I camped out for Toni Morrison. It was the publication day of Paradise, her first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 1993, and the promised final installment in a trilogy beginning with Beloved and Jazz.

So it was a major release by a major writer, but it was also a rite of passage for me. About six weeks earlier, I had decided to change majors, from pre-med to English. For me this was more than a change in required courses or even career path, it was an acknowledgement of who I was and who I wanted to be.

I was a book person and wanted to spend my life in books.

So I went down to my local Borders (now gone like all the rest), and waited for the doors to open at 7am. There was a crowd of holiday shoppers there, but as I zipped to the new hardcover section, no one followed; I was the only one there for Paradise. For some reason, I thought there would be others.

I was disappointed. This was no opening weekend of a blockbuster movie or first day of the baseball season. It was just me.

But then I looked around and saw the frantic, last-minute shopping around me. It wasn’t that these people weren’t interested in books; they were buying them by the armful. But they didn’t care about them as I did, didn’t live for them as I did (and still do.) And that made me feel good about me.

I couldn’t start reading Paradise that day; the holiday hustle was in full swing. But the afternoon of Christmas day, familial activities fully discharged, I took my gifts up to my room, piled them in the corner, and shut the door. Then, for the next nine hours, I read.

And I haven’t stopped.