Reading

I've been accused of eating books. By tonight I should hit 30,000 pages read so far this year, not including newspapers, magazines, blogs and ketchup bottle labels.

I track the books on Excel, partly out of curiosity and partially because a couple of years from now I'll pick up a book and after a few pages suspect I've read it. With the spreadsheet, I can check.

As a child my grandmother and mother read to me regularly: fairy tales, the Bobbsey Twins--I pretended I was Flossie and my Grandfather played the part of Freddie putting aside his gruffness.

How disappointed I was in my first grade reader. Dick and Jane were boring.

Throughout grade school there were many kids series I devoured. I became part of their lives living on the island with Little Maida, solving mysteries with Beverly Gray, and walking through history with the Landmark Series written by well-known authors for kids.

The library was a regular haunt. I took out every twin series book, about twins in other countries. I know now they were terribly stereotyped, and I worried about Chinese little girls having bound feet.

As an English major in college, I read the classics and looked forward to having the time to read whatever and whenever I wanted.

I'm eclectic: fiction, non-fiction, how-to, history, biographies, auto-biographies, mysteries. Every now and then a French book sneaks in, but they take me longer.

I am transported to other times and places. If I want to visit Boston, all I need to do is delve into a Robert B.Parker/Ace Atkins mystery. Through books, I can revisit places I've liked/love: Edinburgh, Damascus, Stockholm, Amsterdam, etc. I can move to other times and ride on a crusade with Eleanor of Aquitaine.

I just finished a ChickLit/Shopping novel. And if the numerous sex scenes and brand names were boring, I had to finish.

"Why?" my husband asked.

"Because the characters are fascinating and I have to find out what happened to them."

When I'm deep into a book, it is as if the characters were living with me, sitting on the couch, asking if I can meet with them after dinner. I find the same thing when I write. My characters move in.

I could stop reading. I could stop writing. I could stop breathing too. It isn't going to happen.