non-guilty pleasures
"not all who wander are lost"
- j.r.r. tolkien
first quote in the sisterhood of the traveling pants. i havent read juvi lit in a while. confession: when i was an adolescent, i spent counless hours pouring through candy books. when i was into the babysitters club series, i remember getting 6 books for christmas one year, and having read them all by the end of the day. my friend talked about addiction in her latest entry. well, i think i was addicted to reading. i read absolutely anything i could get a hold of. i spent hours in the library limiting my selections to 10 books, after which i'd run to my room and deliberate over the reading order.
the summer i was into lois lowry was also the first summer i became a promiscuous reader. during the day, after lunch and before running through the sprinkler, i'd grab anastasia krupnik for a few chapters. after brushing my teeth but before sleep i'd pick up encyclopedia brown and rush through as many chapters as i could before i got yelled at for being awake.
memory, being blissfully imperfect, leads me to think that i also became an insomniac that year. reading early into the morning. regretfully abandoning the rats of nimh to get a little sleep before daytime. waking up groggy and confused, with what i now am familiar with as "sleep deprivation". and doing it agian the next night.
i found it again. and it's not insomnia.
at midnight, several chapters into the traveling pants book i borrowed, i am thrown this quote:
"if you don't find it in the index, look very carefully throughout the entire catalog."
- sears catalog
snicker/snort... oh, the late night giggle! infectious to no one other than you. it's late. mule's coming tomorrow and i will prolly regret staying up tonite, but hell, i have to keep reading after that quote! and read i did... and i kept going. laughing with the jokes, scowling at the mistakes, switching from one girls' plot to the next, comparing and contrasting myself to these characters and who i was at 15/16 and who i am now at 26. falling in love, i gave my heart to the book. i couldnt stop reading it. i yawned, i stretched, i shook sleeping limbs, distressed my cat with gaffaws and read and read and read.
i could have put the book down at any time and slept. it's not insomnia, it's love.
posted by dr gonzo at 12:49 PM
4 Comments:
The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants was a great book!! I throughly enjoyed it.
Speaking of being addicted to books, I found that the secret code with my mother was 3 pages. Anymore than three and she wouldn't let you finish the chapter, any less than three and she'd expect you to be done too soon. Ahhh, the glory of three more pages and a couple more chapters. And hiding under covers with a flashlight...
10lees
3:15 PM
Ok but please tell me you weren't still ready the babysisters club at 15/16.
9:18 AM
I totally did the flashlight thing when I was young. By the time I was 15, I stayed up as late as I wanted. This is where I developed a terrific ability to lie. "What time are you going to bed?" "Oh, I don't know... soon." "What time did you go to bed?" "Oh, I don't know. Not too late." :)
And Sisterhood is fantastic. I liked the book a ton.
7:55 AM
oh, i read everything in my bookshelves at least 3 times. when i was super bored, or unable to go to the library or couldnt afford a new book, yes i would re-read even the BSC books.
But, in high school i actually read all of the assigned books. freshman year i fell in love with Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird and all those classics. i was an english nerd and i didnt know it yet. i also had a tendancy to pick up random books in the adult fiction section of the library, so i couldnt name them here (b/c they werent memorable).
10:31 AM
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