Up until I was about thirteen, I was an avid reader. I read all the time, even spending many elementary school recesses sitting at the edge of the play yard, my nose stuck in whatever book I was enthralled with at the time. My parents used to have to come in and check on my in the middle of the night, since I usually stayed up way past my bedtime reading.
When I got to high school, though, I kind of stopped reading. I quickly figured out that my teachers were assigning me many more pages a night than I could ever get done, so I figured out what actually needed to be read and what I could learn by taking notes in class, which was most of it. I was always busy, so I never had any time to seek out fun books, let alone read them.
This continued through college. Every now and then, especially on vacations and a couple of times during my year as a nanny, I would find some book, usually of the Chick Lit persuasion, and read it in two days. I would remember how much I enjoyed getting lost in a story, even one with as badly-developed characters and thin plots as the books I was reading. Then I would quickly forget again, because I didn't have a book right in front of me to pick up as soon as I finished my last one.
When I graduated last June, I realized that I would finally have time to devote to reading again. I read something like six books in as many weeks. When I moved to San Francisco, I brought along Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, because my friend Lisel told me it was good, and it seemed like it would last me until I was able to get a library card. Since then, I've been reading nonstop, and it's wonderful. Last week, I took People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks out of the library, because Emily has been talking about it for upwards of a year, only to return it four days later because I wasn't able to put it down, so I finished it that quickly. Right now I'm reading the Yokota Officer's Club by Sarah Bird because its cover had plenty of pink on it and it looked good. I'm not sure what I'm going to read next, but I'd better decide soon, because given the rate I'm going, I'm going to need a new book tomorrow.
What's your favorite book of all time? What are you reading right now?
