Cover me with words.

I love to read. Growing up I found three ways to lose myself: reading, video games, and playing the piano. The interesting thing about it is that through losing myself I find myself. Every time.
Our second bedroom has 3 bookshelves in it. (There's also one in our kitchen waiting to be decided on.) These three bookshelves are full of books. Fantasy, SciFi, children's books, historical fiction, textbooks, biographies, relgious books, poetry, comics (of the funny and the awesome varieties), mysteries, old journals... I love seeing the way different authors trick the words around to express their idea. And some of these people found a way of writing, of glowing through paper, that has never been duplicated. No one writes like Mark Twain. You'll never find another work like his and when you read through it, you know his voice. The quiet brilliance of Jane Austen is unmatched. And Shakespeare, he and God have gotta be pals. L.M. Montgomery has a warmth to her books that I crave. e.e. cummings is a master. Pablo Neruda's heart could swallow me so easily. Diana Wynne Jones has an imagination beyond the creativity on most shelves. And Peter S. Beagle can disappear into his characters so you forget his silent steps across the page.
I've never understood when people tell me they don't like to read. And friends of mine who struggle to read and can't enjoy it, I just feel overwhelmingly sad for them. Because it's such a part of me and my life. I will actually pick up an ancient volume and open to a random page and just smell those pages. I don't know what it is, but it's the sun to me. I can be anything when I open a book. I can go anywhere. And I forget what hurts. Just for a moment. And someday I'll thank those wonderful minds I could turn to in hard times. Terry Brooks and Rita Mae Brown. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Orson Scott Card. C.S. Lewis and Walt Whitman. And the Berenstains are getting a big hug from me eventually. (I love those bears!)
Johnny and I always love to pass an evening together reading aloud from our favorites. Getting lost together. It's magic.