Book Worm

I crammed my last three semesters of school into one year, so after graduating last April I realized that I had lost all interest in reading. I’d done it non-stop for 12 months and if I never saw another book again, that would have been fine by me. This was a totally new experience for me because I have always been a book worm. Story from my childhood:

In my first grade class there were two reading groups – the red group and the
blue group. I was in the blue group. On the first day of class the red group got
to sit down together first with the teacher while the rest of us colored, but I
was listening to them and keeping pace pretty well. Then the blue group sat in a
circle while the red group colored. What I discovered at this point outraged me:
the red group was for the fast readers and the blue group for the slower
readers!! I was NOT a blue-group-reader!! (See the horrendous amount of pride
already apparent at this young age… I’m working on it.)

After that the whole class was sitting at their desks and the teacher put a word up on the board. She began at the beginning of the alphabet and asked each person what the word on the board was. My name is at the end of the alphabet, so I had to sit and listen to each person try to give their answer and was shocked to discover that no one knew what the word was! By the time the teacher got around to me I was nearly
falling out of my chair and shouted “HILL! It says HILL!!” (Don’t ask me what
words we were reading in our little groups…I can’t remember, but apparently they
were easier than the word hill) The teacher asked me “You read that word?” to
which I replied, “Yes.” She put another word on the board, which I also read,
and the next day I was put into the red group, hallelujah!!

I don’t know what it was about that experience, but having the teacher recognize me as a good reader and recognizing it myself, I started reading as much as I could. I am notorious for staying up all night just to keep reading.

Flash back to 2007: So there I was – a fish out of water – a reader who didn’t want to read. That inevitably didn’t last, and at the end of last year I started to look for a good book to get me back on track. I have the soundtrack for the musical “Wicked” (but I haven’t seen it… anyone up for a trip to NYC?) so I decided I should read the book, everyone says it’s so great. Bad choice. Aside from being pretty dirty, I was bored out of my mind! I know that there are lots of people who think it is the most brilliant book ever, but it just didn’t appeal to me, so be it.

I kind of felt like I’d gotten burned and stopped reading again, but a few months later I said to myself “Self, you have to get back in the saddle, let’s find you a good book.” I began by creating a nice atmosphere for me to read in: I chucked the old couch that was left in my room by previous tenants and made myself a reading nook, pictured here. Note my comfy IKEA chair – come have a sit…. You’ll probably run out and buy yourself one too.

With my reading nook complete I began to search for the book that was going to help me find myself again. When I explained my plight to my friend Wayne (holla) the sun broke through the clouds – he had just the book for me: The Glass Castle. I guess I am just not much of a fantasy person (aside from my guilty pleasure: Harry Potter) and this book is anything but fantasy. It is the memoir of a woman who grew up surrounded by/in poverty in the United States and it is the story of her family. A lot of sad things happened to her and her siblings, but I loved her style of writing and it is fascinating to me to learn about how other people live their lives. I read the book in 2 days (mind you I work full time so I basically didn’t sleep) and I was so engrossed in my reading during my commute that I ran right into and nearly knocked over a little old lady in the Metro. Since then two of my roommates have read the book as well…. I don’t know if Wayne will ever get it back.

Moral of the story: I am a reader again! The only problem now is that I finished that book… so I have decided to ask you all for suggestions!! What book should I read next?!!