Reading

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
-- Jerry Seinfeld

NOTE: I apologize, for whatever reason, Blogger has decided that it doesn't like my paragraph breaks. I can put in five spaces between paragraphs and it still jams everything together. So I have included ~~ between paragraphs to give a break and assist the reader.

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I don't know about anyone else but I love bookstores and libraries. When I was a child, during the summer, we would ride our bikes to the library at least once a week, more often than not, twice a week. During the winter, we always went to the library on Saturdays.

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I can still remember being in 8th grade and having to do my first "big" report and having the librarian take me back to "the stacks." Phew. It was so incredible to realize that what I had been experiencing every week for years was just a micro-organism of what was really there.

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The kids know that I go into either one of them, we could be done for the day. LOL. In fact, if we are returning items to the library, and they don't want to spend hours there, they will volunteer to run in and drop things off! On the other hand, if they want to spend time in a library or bookstore, they know it is better to go with me rather with their Dad. He will spend a lot of time in bookstores and libraries too, but not as much as I do.

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Most of my siblings all loved reading. I remember growing up when my Mom thought we were ready, she would expose us to different books and authors, Gone with the Wind and Mrs. Mike are two examples.

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In 11th grade, our English class was literature. We had poetry and had to read some classics, including Red Badge of Courage, Tell Tale Heart, the works of O Henry (my English teacher was a great fan), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women, Exodus. I remember the first day of English when she was going over what we were going to be reading that year and I sat there going down the list and checking off all the books I had already read. I think the only one that I hadn't read was Exodus. Leon Uris led me to James Mitchner.

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So, the question is, do you still read?

What is on your list now?

Do you ever go back and read those books that you read when you were younger?

Are they as good as you remember?

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Our Whoduknit group for September is taking a step back. As you can imagine with the name Whoduknit, we focus on mysteries. So for September, we are taking a step back into childhood and reading any Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mystery we want. I am looking forward to it.

Right now, I am reading Plains Crazy. I just finished The Last Templar (very good) and Keys to Midnight. Besides the Nancy Drew book, on the table next to my chair, I have the Memoirs of Jane Austen. A friend and my daughter highly recommend it.