My Weekend's All Booked

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them. Oh, how I love this quote from Lemony Snicket. I bought a purse large enough to put a book in it so that I would always have the option of reading, no matter where I was. This blog post is an ode to reading. I have not lived one life in my eighteen years, I have lived thousands, for each book I have read has given me another life, another story to live and experience. Oh, how I love to read! When I open a book, I forget my own troubles for a time, and it’s like I’m even in their story. And even when I close the book, I look at the world differently. “When I’m really into a novel, I’m seeing the world differently at that time. Not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I’m actually walking around in a bit of a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism” (Colin Firth). It’s strange that those around me have no idea the turmoil my mind is going through. Thinking about the story and the characters and how their story is on pause because I can’t read at that time. No one around me even knows! They have no idea the stories on repeat in my mind.

I remember talking with my dad, fellow reader and esteemed English teacher, about how reading does indeed increase our knowledge. Because I’ve read books, my wisdom and knowledge of the world has increased. I’ll never know what it will be like to be in love in 14^th-century Verona, but Shakespeare showed me a glimpse of what it would be like in Romeo and Juliet. Emily Brontë wrote about living in the mysterious moors of early 19^th century England, but haunted with the story of family troubles and characters we love to hate in Wuthering Heights. So many books I have read, and I have learned of so many things just by picking up a book and opening the cover. Of course, it is with a fictional bias, but it is through reading that my interest increases, and I desire to learn more of Regency England or more of Germany’s haunting history during World War II. My dad says that is why we read difficult books in school, because our knowledge increases and we learn not only to read hard things, but we learn of new things. Anyone can read a beach book by themselves at home, but it is difficult to read Hamlet and understand it all. I would not have loved Shakespeare if I read it by myself, but at school, it was my favorite novel (play, to be accurate) to study.

Gordon B. Hinckley said, “There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.” Oh, how I agree with that statement. I don’t know when President Hinckley said that, but it is a magical quote. If you go into my room, you’ll most likely see a stack of books my bed: books I want to read or books I have finished, but I can’t bear to put them away back on the bookshelf. This picture accompanied with the blog post is a picture of most of the books I read this summer. I took the picture, but then I read a few more. Yes, clearly I was the kid that was excited when the teacher told us to read after recess.

Also, here’s some advice for y’all. If you are dating someone, and he doesn’t have a bookshelf or even a stack of books on his desk, you either gotta convert him or dump him. Don’t believe me? Then just look at me and all the advanced experience I’ve had (just kidding, I’m convinced I’ll end up like Mary, rather than Elizabeth Bennet). Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, I think Jane Austen said it best: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”