Curled up on top of the floor heat vent, under a comforter, on a chilly Christmas afternoon with my brand new hardback copy of Matilda.
Flipping through the pages of a history book that my sister and I dug out of a dumpster at the high school where my dad taught, writing in the answers to the end-of-section review questions after reading each chapter.
Proudly clamping my brand new lamp to the edge of my frilly, white and pink daybed, knowing that now I could stay up way later than my prescribed bedtime to read just one or two (or three, or maybe four) chapters in the lives of the Holt family, from the American Dynasty series, in which I was totally entrenched.
Wandering down not-so-well-lit alleys with a backpack on my back, in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, (the list goes on…) in search of a used bookstore where I could buy a novel or two to tide me over until the next hostel with a “take-one, leave-one” lending library policy. (I must confess my thievery here. At these hostels, I took *WAY* more books that I left. It was out of desperation. Really.)
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Words and stories and books have always played a huge role in my life. From my earliest memories of reading the comics in the morning newspaper as I ate my bowl of Lucky Charms to my current, late-night book buying binges on BarnesandNoble.com, books are always there.
Last night, as I was putting off doing anything constructive, like folding laundry or cleaning up the dinner dishes, I was randomly surfing the internet when I heard the lovely little electronic chirp meaning I had a new Google message from someone. Toggling over to my open Gmail account, I saw that it was my 6th grade niece, Kelsey, who was just starting her day in Idaho. She must have been ready for school a few minutes early, as she was online and we had a chance to chat for a bit. After talking about how school was going and what her crazy siblings were up to, she asked if I wanted to pick a book to read together and then talk about.
YES!!
Of course I want to read a book together and then talk about it. It will be like our own mini-book club!
I was so excited that she thought of this idea and I was on board before she could change her middle school mind. Thinking she might have an in on what was popular right now, I asked what she wanted to read (it isn’t always easy to keep up with young adult trends from the other side of the world), but she deferred to my English teacher-ness and said to pick.
As Kels headed off to her day filled with math and science and orchestra and dance, I spent the rest of the evening bouncing between BN.com and Amazon.com, looking for the latest and greatest novels to read together, thinking if I narrowed the choices down, she could make the final selection.
Because of this nearly manic need to have something to read in front of me at all times (cereal boxes, owner’s manuals, advertisements around the edges of a map…), our new reading adventure just gives me another outlet for my bookworm DNA. I’m so excited (and I just can’t hide it!) to get reading together.
Book recommendations have been submitted to my co-reader and I await her proclamation. Next step? An awesome name for our two-person reading group.
In Search of the End of the Sidewalk 