Advent Day 1: I’m grateful for an ever-growing to-read list.

 

If I had to choose an addiction, I’d say “books”; but, also, rather, that they chose me. I don’t even remember a time I wasn’t reading. My first memories consist of torchlight, blanket fort, and stack of books. And, very soon after, prescription glasses. Hey, all addictions have their price. There is something so juicily, exquisitely exciting about a new book by a favourite author arriving in the mail, whether fiction, non-fiction or somewhere in between. I feel all wriggly with delight on the inside.

Mind you, I have never been the fastest reader. I think I might be the slowest reader I know; so much so that I’m convinced I have some undetected attention or learning disorder. In fact, I tend to glare sulkily and jealously at friends with photographic memories who don’t so much read as Xerox pages of books into their minds.

But I love rollicking good fiction and well-written non-fiction. I love having my mind and ideas and fixed points twisted and pulled out of shape and entertained and squashed… I love being carried on new ships and seas and rivers and someone else’s dreams. I think it is one of the easiest ways to come out of ourselves, one of the laziest, one of the kindest.

So many books to get through! All the miles to go before I sleep, to borrow from and paraphrase one of my favourite American poets.

I’m grateful for bookshops.

I love the smell of bookshop

It smells like rustling paper

Crisp and itchy like linen

Or whispery thin like wafer

It smells like crunchy stories

The whiff of haste and pace

Or languid atmospheric

Perfume and embrace

It smells like couch and coffee

Like dim candles and red wine

Like deep imagination calling

Us to feast and to divine.

I’m grateful for moodiness.

For it ensures I read and view very different and varied material indeed. There are times I simply cannot tolerate another dystopian future fantasy, young adult or otherwise; times in which I just can’t bear another good-story-nonetheless-consisting-of-sappy-romance (I have never experienced a mood in which I want to read sappy romantic fiction otherwise); days I can’t bear another sequel, or another metaphysically-gifted adult or teenager.

Moodiness has led me into nostalgia, which has prompted me to re-read things like Alice in Wonderland, Sophie’s World, and The Merchant of Venice, stuff of my childhood. Moodiness has led me into no-nonsense, no-indulgence exasperation, which has led me to authors I normally overlook, or stories I hadn’t immediately taken to before– an example is Katya’s World of the Russalka Chronicles. I LOVE the Russalka Chronicles now. It has even occasionally given me the patience to overlook crappy writing for an otherwise good story for its target audience. *coughTwilightcough*

And I definitely need to be in a particular mood to read poetry.

I like my moods. Yes, getting our emotions under control is a mature, productive and freeing thing, but we don’t need to demonize moods, moodiness or emotions to achieve it, for those things make us what we are: juicy, changeable, loving, empathetic human beings.