I have fallen in love with my bookcases lately. So full of books to read. I was in love with bookstores before, you see.
I would come home from the store and unpack all the books I bought and stand before my bookcases trying to find a spot I could slide these new ones into. And the books just kept filling up those bookcases because I just wasn’t done with bookstores yet. Some I’ve read, but more are waiting patiently for me to open their covers, only just as wide as the binding allows, to feel the paper, to gaze at the first word, the first sentence. It feels like I’m embarking on a new journey, each and every time, and once the first chapter is behind me I am fully engrossed. Sometimes when I am finished a book, when I feel the need to read the last few sentences over and over again, when the story has been particularly emotional, I need to wait a day or two to begin another journey. I need to let the story flow through me all over again. I feel attached to it. Sometimes I love that feeling so much I can’t read another book until that feeling passes.
Quick way to get a thrill huh?
The first couple of books were enjoyable, well written, easy to read, and pulled at my heart-strings. (Have you read “The End of The Alphabet” by CS Richardson?) On with the next one, and the next…I lay on the couch with a brown furry throw over my legs, (it is promptly kicked off during a hot flash!). I’m propped up just write…sorry – right…with perfectly plump pillows, my glasses are clean, the house is dark except for the reading light strategically placed behind me, a can of gingerale is within reach on the corner of the coffee table, and once I settle in, George the cat climbs into my lap. He is restless, but he doesn’t stop me from turning pages. Sometimes I doze off, my stillness and the silence is so comforting. But when my eyes open again, I raise the book up off my lap and continue. Until I doze again….
This is what my evenings have been like lately. I LOVE THIS. And when I head off to bed, I take the book with me and do the same thing there. Until I doze off for good.
The latest book has got me thinking though. About writing. I’m noticing this time, that I’m reading, but taking into account what is being said, when, and why, and how. It’s not distracting me from the book very much. I think though, that this book is less emotional – it’s called The Big Tiny (about Dee Williams building her own tiny home! brackets within brackets here (I wanna do it too!)) than my preferred type of book and I’m able to analyze the structure in a more detached way. Perhaps this is why I should re-read some of my other favourite books to see what the author has done to affect me so much.
How has the author sucked me in emotionally that I need to read a book twice to figure it out! Now that’s a successful book in my opinion. That’s exactly how I’d like to write. To engross the reader so deeply in the story and the characters, and the feelings of the characters, that they are unaware that they have attached themselves to your creation, a set of pages bound up in a paper cover, words and sentences, phrasing and timing..
Excuse me now, I have books to read.
