Reading.

.Firstly, I'm slightly wary of attempting this blog because I am writing with a semi-specific purpose, and I know that if I touch on something as important to me as reading, I'll want to say every thought and feeling I have on the matter, which would make a quite extensive entry. However, I'll do my best to keep it of a normal length, and in doing so I suspect I will be sorely disappointed at the completion of this blog, realizing I said what I intended while leaving out so much more.

I love reading. When I was a child, I always loved reading. Most of my friends feel the same way, as we have entered into countless discussions about the hours we spent as children pouring over books when other kids were staring at Gameboys or playing sports on some community team. Perhaps this is why I do well on grammar portions of standardized tests; after seeing so many sentences and words for so long, I usually have a feel of which option looks the most correct.

When I wasn't running around outside with Dustin as a child, I was reading. As young as second grade, I remember loving books. In first grade, the teacher gave me The Velveteen Rabbit, one of her childhood favorites. In third grade, the teacher let me choose any book from the shelf to keep because I had so frequently borrowed books (I chose Roald Dahl's Matilda, still a favorite. To this day, I love children's books and juvenile fiction and the like.) I spent the summer after fifth grade riding my bike to the library weekly and checking out ten books from Applegate's Animorphs series. I'd finish them, then next week ride down to check out the next ten. I was one of the kids who finished the fourth Harry Potter book in around twenty four hours, picking it up early in the morning and refusing to rest. I'd spend free time, car rides, before school, sometimes during lunch, reading. My best friend in middle school was the same way, so we made quite a pair.

Somewhere in the midst of high school, life became too busy to read regularly like I used to back in the days of middle school, and I realized I'd spend long amounts of time not doing any pleasure reading, since I was more focused on high school, homework, extracurricular activities, and my social life.

College is also busy, but sometimes I still manage. Last semester I bought the first two books of the Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Extras series. It's another take on a futuristic Utopian society, one of my favorite types of books, like The Giver, Anthem, or Brave New World. I have yet to read 1984, but I have recently purchased it and will be reading it in the next two weeks. Anyways, I spent the next 36 hours completing the first two books of the series, and immediately had to get the next two, completing the series in less than three days. I forget what schoolwork and sleep I sacrificed to accomplish this, but I don't think my grades were as good that week. When I start reading, the book consumes my life. I'll go get food, but read while I eat (a habit I assume I picked up from my father, who, like me, loves to read a great book while eating a meal alone.) I'll read during lecture, I'll read during my free time. I'll put whatever else in life--sleep, school, social life, cleaning, etc.--on hold for the sake of the story.

I guess the reason this is all on my mind is because yesterday I read Confessions of a Shopaholic, and have just completed My Sister's Keeper. It was an amazing book. I could have blogs and blogs of commentaries on my opinions of the books I've read, the messages they convey, the depth they reveal that movies never can, and so many other opinions, feelings, and thoughts on the matter. Thanks to IB, I could even write you literary essays about hte author's use of diction or narrators or some other feature. But that is for those other blogs, and the essays I will never again have to write. This blog is to tell you that in today alone I completed this book. I sometimes wonder at my habit of reading books so quickly, without pause. It's almost exhausting, to live through so much time of other people's lives in what is just hours of my own life. (Unless I am reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which does take place in one day and therefore works perfectly in this scenario.) However, today I lived lifetimes of other characters. How much of the novel have I actually retained? What will actually stay with me? Sure, I got the big picture, the message, and some of the finer details, but are books more meaningful if you take time? Do you understand more if you go slowly, stopping to meditate on what you read as you take a break from the novel? Are you supposed to go through so much in so little time? What exactly does the author intend for you to do?

Maybe it doesn't even matter. Maybe it's just the process of reading, of absorbing, and of living that novel. After all, a thousand people can read the same novel and draw different conclusions from it; maybe I see the book slightly differently just because that's how books are seen, and the rest is less relevant.

Whatever the answer, I probably will never know, because I doubt I will ever be able to take my time going through a novel. I will become so engrossed in the book that I won't notice that it's two in the morning. I will be so involved in the story that I'll stop noticing the world passing around me, and I'll keep reading until I reach the last page, the final word, at which point I will stop and let time re-settle and I'll remember where I am, who I am, and when it really is. And I'll look for another book, another life into which I can fully throw myself.

I guess all I am really trying to say is that I love reading.