i began my lifelong obsession with books early on. my parents used to read to me every night, and (because they are oh so clever!) they started to skip pages to make the stories go faster so they could put me to sleep sooner. i promise, i'm pretty sure they loved me. anyway, at age 3, i was laying there and indignantly pointed out to my mom that she had skipped a whole page in the book. thinking i had just memorized the pictures, my mom asked how i knew, at which point i proceeded to flip back and read the page to her. then she thought maybe i had just memorized the whole book (a wonder in and of itself), so she grabbed another classic (probably a golden book) and asked me to read a random page from that book. i happily complied, and thus, my status as a child prodigy was cemented forever. i mean, i was reading chapter books (babysitter's club, yesss!) in kindergarten...evidently, that's not normal? whatever.
as i got older, i made my city's award-winning library my second home, especially because they had reading contests in the summer. you filled out a little slip of paper when you had read five books, your mom signed it, and then you got to enter a drawing for a prize that would be handed out at an end-of-summer party. luckily, you didn't have to be present to win, because although i loved to read, i was also kind of a slacker when it came to going to library events. um, hang out with other nerdy book-loving children or play at the pool with my friends until dark? tough choice. right. the point is, i won prizes every single year of my adolescence (from kindergarten until 8th grade, because summer reading contests are sooo not cool enough for high schoolers). from pizza parties to free roller skating coupons to gift certificates for shops in town - i was a summer reading contest baller. when the librarian called the day after the end-of-summer party, i'd be all, "yeah yeah, what did i win this year?" wait, who am i kidding? i love winning things, so it was probably more, "OMG! I WON?! EEEEEEK!"
so yes, i loved the library with all of my heart...but i also began a little love affair with bookstores on the side. my grandparents used to give me money for every A i received on a report card, and duh, i was smart, right? this was an easy way to earn some serious dinero, and as soon as i had that cash in my hand, i would ride my bike down the little alley that virtually connected my street with a little bookstore called b. dalton. all the women who worked there not only knew me by name, but they also met basically all of the members of my family along the way. i could hang out at b. dalton for hours, browsing through the latest young adult fiction (i adored sweet valley high and the 90210 series and anything by christopher pike) and teen magazines.
to this day, there is something i find completely cathartic about heading to a huge bookstore (i.e. the barnes and noble at easton) when i have money to burn and absolutely nothing to do on a weekend afternoon. i love walking through the aisles and aisles of books, checking out the new release and summer reading tables, and i especially love walking out the door with 3-5 brand new books to read. (i told you at the beginning, i realize i am such a geek for this.) i will seriously look at titles in every genre from travel to history to humor to self-help to biographies to sports...but of course, my favorite books are still plain old fiction.
i'll admit it: usually i can't get enough of chick-lit. all books by jane green (jemima j, the beach house, mr. maybe for example) or jen lancaster (bitter is the new black and pretty in plaid are my favorites) go perfectly with a C&V and a swimming pool...or a cup of hot chocolate on a snowy afternoon. basically, they're my any-season indulgences. and don't even get me started on janet evanovich, who writes the stephanie plum series, because that crazy comedy/mystery shit keeps me laughing and guessing through every page. honestly, when a new stephanie plum book comes out, i can't even wait for it to be released in paperback - i need it immediately.
however, every now and then i will occasionally read something deeper and more meaningful. and although my life is pretty awesome usually, i am sometimes interested in self-help books, too. now, i'm not talking about books like he's just not that into you, which my parents gave me in my christmas stocking in 2003 because they hated my then-boyfriend. (ironically, it turns out they were right as he cheated on me/i left him soon after). although that particular novel was fun and kind of interesting to read, those kind of "self-help" books typically don't do a lot for me. but i love reading books that make me think about my faith differently, or open me up to new ideas about the future/my career/relationships that i would never have invented on my own. i think learning as much as you can about the world also helps you learn about yourself. does that also make me a nerd? probably, but i can deal with it.
recently, a certain book kept being brought to my attention by different people. i saw quotes from it on facebook, i had friends pull it out of their purses when they were digging for something else, and i believe hf even wrote a recent blog post about it herself. finally i was walking around the teeny-tiny fort myers airport last wednesday, wasting 3 hours of my life before my flight wandering in and out of all the little shops. now, in an airport that small, every single shop has the exact same 50 books and 20 magazines. you can only look at them so many times. but in each shop, this book that i'd been hearing so much about lately was prominently displayed.
the book is eat pray love by elizabeth gilbert. the first time i picked it up and read the back, it sounded kind of interesting, but also like it might be a little over my head. i mean, she used the word "transcendence" on the back cover. i have many thoughts, but i would categorize very few of them as transcendent in nature - and by "very few" i might mean zero transcendent thoughts. i put the book down and kept wandering...but i kid you not, this book jumped out at me in every single shop in the airport. i picked it up a second time (at a different shop) and read a couple of pages. i do this before i buy any book - just to see if i like the author's style. some people read the last page; i read the first page to see if it's a book i can even get into and i flip to the middle and read a random page to see if i am still interested. eat pray love pretty much passed that test, but i wasn't sure if i was in a mood to read about someone else's enlightening experience. i even texted my work friend, the frutitatian, to ask her if it was worth buying. needless to say, the third time i saw it, i bought it - if for no other reason than so it would stop annoying me by its presence.
i started reading it in a hammock at my parents' house late yesterday afternoon, and i seriously cannot put it down. i read more before bed, and i went to a park around the corner from work and read more during lunch today. there are so many things in that book that i can relate to, and instead of explaining them all to you, i'm just going to say this: read it for yourself. seriously, i'm recommending it to everyone. and if you hate it, i'm sorry. there's always jane green, janet evanovich, or (if you're a male reader, even though i don't think i have any of those) jeff and michael shaara. anyway, this has been possibly my most rambly post ever, but here's an excerpt to convince you to go read this book:
"Virginia Woolf wrote, 'Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword.' On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where 'all is correct.' But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, 'all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.' Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.
"...The Bhagavad Gita - that ancient Indian Yogic text - says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly."
