I have spent the last twenty years reading books.  This may not seem all the big of an accomplishment, and truly I don’t think it is.  What people seem to find remarkable is that I have read at least one book a day (many, many times it was four or five a day).  But for argument’s sake let’s say I read one book a day and go with it; this would mean in the last twenty years I have read 7,300 books.  And since many days I read four or five, I am taking it upon myself to round that number to 7,500 books.  The books were biographies, romances, mysteries, political intrigues, women studies, religious studies, best sellers, and the classics.  I, of course, don’t have all those books anymore, despite my broken heart I have actually given many away, and now that products such as the Nook have been discovered my walls are not as covered with the slightly musky, but often poetic words of those that have had the talent to keep my alive in my soul (if you couldn’t do it, I hate to tell you but you were immediately trashed (or taken to the library).

I don’t know any more if I am shy or not, I don’t know if the world I live in is something I participate in, or if I am just so comfortable in the middle of a book that it has become the compass of my life.  I listen to new music when I read about it in a book, I see a new sight when an imaginative author describes the place to me. When I drive down the road, I can see paths that my heroes and heroines must have traveled, despite the fact the travel occurred two hundred years ago.  My bucket list, the things I want to do in life, is completely determined by the ideas and expectations I have received in my books.

There was a quote in “You’ve Got Mail” (and I am paraphrasing) when the heroine questions if she is seeing something extraordinary (a butterfly on the subway) because she had read it in a book and therefore, she was missing out on everything else, or was she experiencing more because the book pointed it out and therefore, without the book her life would like luster.  Any one that is a voracious reader falls trap to this question, do I see like because it is in a book, or am I missing life because I am in a book?

I don’t yet know the answer.  What I do know is that I have thousands upon thousands of books, and as I am still reading that number is going to grow.  I would like to share my thoughts about those books.. I will try to categorize them in way so that you can easily find something you are looking for…but this is my first blog so be patient.

Good luck and Happy Reading!  JF