I used to die frequently in my dreams, often from causes that should have been insufficient for death, such as touching a doorknob or sneezing. I don't remember how I'd died on this occasion. My dead self was wandering through my grandmother's house (which in reality had many mysterious doors and passages behind the walls), and I discovered a small black door behind the pantry.

When I opened the door and squeezed through, I beheld an enormous room filled with stacks of books, comfortable chairs, thick carpet, a piano, long tables with green-shaded lamps that cast little yellow pools of inviting light. It was a library. The ceiling was very high; in fact, where there should have been a ceiling was a distant night sky. The other curious feature of the room was that once I was inside it I ceased to be dead.

When I woke up I understood that I had seen a form of heaven...

What is this heaven? What is it we desire from the hours, weeks, lifetimes we devote to books? What would you sacrifice to sit in that comfy chair with perfect light for an afternoon in eternity, reading the perfect book, forever?

SOURCE: Afterword of the short graphic novel The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenegger, 2010. The book "... has its origins in a dream I had as a teenager..."

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