On Books and Women and James Bond

Owning hundreds of books you don’t read is like being in hundreds of sexless marriages.

As a child, I loved books. I read them. I owned them. I adored them. I amassed quite the collection—moved them from town to town, apartment to apartment, shelf to shelf. It’s amazing how much you convince yourself you love a book you haven’t even touched yet: the anticipation of cracking it open, the promise of slipping inside its world. Maybe that’s part of the thrill—the slow tease of delayed gratification. I read some of them, sure. But the vast majority I didn’t.

People rarely reread, and almost no one reads hundreds of books a year. Let’s be honest about the lovely shelves we show off—they’re lingerie for the home. Decorative. Suggestive. Untouched.

When I left one marriage for another, there simply wasn’t space in my new husband’s house. I cried as I separated the books to donate, as if I were making Sophie’s Choice. I boxed up the ones to keep and stored them in the garage. Six years passed. I had forgotten about those boxes entirely—living out there like old lovers waiting for a text that never came. Ghosted in the garage.

I thought about opening them, running my fingers over their pages, but I realized I didn’t love them the way I imagined. They had sat untouched in boxes, and before that, untouched on shelves. The fantasy of someday reading them had been more seductive than the act itself.

So I got rid of them all. How sad that I hoarded them from others for decades—people who might have truly loved them, touched them, devoured them.

Funny thing: once I vowed to just read books but not keep them, I actually read more.

I love a time limit. A library due date is an invitation, a countdown. I have only four weeks with this book—make every page count. It’s astonishing how quickly I can devour something when I know I have to give it back. I savor each second, linger over lines, snap photos of passages like snapshots of lovers you want to remember. Strange to think of all the books I once dog-eared, believing I’d return to those pages someday—yet I never did. They sat collecting dust while I walked by, back when I hoarded books.

I still purchase some books—but when I do, I read them. Really read them. And then I pass them along. If I loved them so much, why wouldn’t I want someone else to love them too?

After too many years of marriage, I’ve wondered what life will look like after my husband dies. I fear the loneliness, but I don’t want marriage again. Hookup culture can feel toxic, dehumanizing, sure—but I believe in brief romances with built-in expiration dates. Meant to be savored, indulged in, lived fully, but not meant to last. I don’t want anything forever anymore. Not a book. Not a person. Nothing is forever.

When I was young, we had only six TV channels. One night, after whatever show I was watching ended, a movie began: a man parachuted out of a helicopter just before it exploded, landed in a blazing red convertible with an even hotter woman driving. He wasn’t even out of breath when he kissed her. I was transfixed.

My mother said it was James Bond and she didn’t want me watching—that it would teach me to fall for any handsome man with an accent. I promised that’s not what I’d learn. And it wasn’t.

I didn’t want him. I wanted to be him. I still do. That summer, at twelve, I watched every James Bond film ever made. Perhaps if I studied him, I could be more like him.

James Bond has never had a nosebleed because the air is too cold and dry. He never flinches disarming a nuclear bomb under the ocean. And the women—well, the women adore him. He has everything I don’t.

I say “women,” but really they were showgirls, drug dealers, spies, assassins, princesses, heiresses, oil tycoons. Every flavor. Even a tarot reader. Women who wanted exactly what Bond wanted—and what I want: an adventure with an expiration date. A brief, exquisite escape.

A week with someone who makes you feel alive, then adieu, Mr. Bond—back to real life once the world is safe again. And Bond wasn’t just a pump-and-dump caricature. He was romantic, attentive, gentle, confident, dangerously cool. Everything I’m not.

And he took his time. They might have had only twenty-four hours to stop Dr. No, but he never rushed a woman into or out of bed. Yet the clock was always ticking—like a library due date. It made everything sweeter. More urgent. More meaningful precisely because it wouldn’t last.

I wish I could offer that kind of experience—a Bond-like interlude. A limited-time romance to savor, to bask in, to remember. 

That's the problem with marriage—commitment, long-term partners—is that eventually they become like books on a shelf. You like that they’re there, that they’re yours. You get comfortable with the weight and space they take up. You enjoy the idea of them—the potential of reading them, savoring them, getting lost in them—but the potential is never realized. Real life gets in the way. Bills. Doctor’s appointments. A million tiny chores. Wash the dishes.

I don’t know what my life will be like when my husband dies. But I know I don’t want to collect books anymore, nor keep a woman just to “have” her. I want something between a whirlwind and a catch-and-release kind of love. Something that can last six beautiful, sensual months, and then end—before she finds out my nose bleeds when the air is too cold and dry. Before she sees how awkward and clumsy I am. Before she realizes I’m not what she wants. Before she sees how poorly I wash dishes.

You see, I’m not a hero at all.

I’m not James Bond.

And, truthfully, James Bond isn’t James Bond either. In Ian Fleming’s books he’s actually rather grotesque— a chain-smoking alcoholic who smells bad. The women just aren’t around long enough to notice. 

Maybe that’s the trick of it: fantasy works when you don’t have time to look too closely. Books, Women, Bond, and I need an expiration date.