books books books books! I love books! And you know what else I love? Talking about books! Reading them! sniffing them…mmmm…paper! I love all those little black squared off rectangles that are made up of letters and words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters and books books books books! I love that little creaky noise a book makes when you first crack it open and I love the whiiiifff of the pages when you flip through them. I love reading prologues and acknowledgements and author’s notes and blurbs. I love looking at the back side of the title page and tracing a book’s history and seeing who did the cover art and where it was published.
Can you tell I was at book group tonight? It was kind of a social get-together, too, because Kathey is here and a lot of our friends are taking every opportunity to be wherever she and Russell are because they’re only here for 2 weeks and that’s just not enough. Camilla, our hostess, made yummy pasta and salad and a blueberry & raspberry cobbler with icecream for dessert, and we all sat around and talked and talked and talked. And then we talked about the book. And we talked about lots of other books and it was just great.
I just finished Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow and it was a fun, imaginative, unpredictable ride, although a bit off the wall. Now I’m reading The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke and I’m having a hard time putting it down. Next on the list is Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. Whee! books books books books! Can you imagine waking up one day and having READ everything? Nothing left to read? *oooh shudder* Good thing people are writing new ones every day! What I like best is that they’re being written for me. I honestly feel like that…good books are for me! You might think they are being written for you, and you can think that all you like, but I know the truth.
They’re calling for me. They want me to read them. They know I’m out there looking for them and waiting for them and dying to get my hands on them so I can lap them up and gulp them down and then stroke them lovingly and read them again. Sometimes I poke my finger in the center to check and realize I’ve picked up a dud (like coconut when I was expecting a cream filling) but that doesn’t happen so often anymore, because I have learned to be much more discriminating. I pick my books more carefully than I did when I was twenty and had all the time in the world, and all the books in it, too.
OH! I forgot to talk about how happy I was leaving choir last night. We sang my favorite Christmas song! FINALLY! I was seventeen years old the last time I sang it with a choir. (I recorded it, in a real recording session, in a real recording studio, in a duet with a girlfriend in 1992, but that was a long time ago, too). It was just as great as I remembered. It practically sings itself! I had a huge grin on my face the entire time, and everyone was looking at me and smiling, and I could tell they liked it, too. We’re having a FREE Christmas concert in Malmö on December 8th, if anyone is interested 😀
Really Great Writing Out There Right Now: Reading Lessons