Reading, reading, reading

I just posted a comment on a topic Nathan Bransford posted a few days ago, entitled "What are you reading at the moment?" and it made me think of something to write. Hooray for that blessed delivery, as I've been at a loss since I got back from my vacation, and ran out of riveting travel stories to tell.

At the moment, I'm reading several things, and anxious to start several more. I've always loved to read, ever since I was just a little gal. My mom has countless pictures of me when I was younger, having fallen asleep with a book open over my face or on my chest or clutched in my hands. As I got into junior high & high school, I didn't have as much time to read. As I entered college and the workforce, I just didn't make enough time to read. I continued to buy books, but never quite got around to reading them. I've gotten back to the place where I feel a need to read something. I love perusing bookstores, and would buy everything there if I had the resources. I just need to read the things I buy. And so I set off on a quest even Prince Caspian would be hard-pressed to succeed in. (I've been watching a lot of movies, lately, too)

This quest begins with Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Well, no, let me backtrack a little. I guess it actually begins a little under a year ago when I got completely entrenched in the Twilight series. I read all 4 books in the span of 4 days, and I work full time. Every waking hour not spent at work (and some spent at work that weren't filled with actual work) was spent in Forks, Washington with Bella & the Cullens. It was so easy to get lost in their world, which is so utterly fictional, yet so incredibly realistic at the same time. I remembered why I loved reading so much. Over the last year I've tried to stay in that mode of reading, but it wasn't working out.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when, out of boredom and the spring TV season being over, I picked up Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince for the umpteenth time. The movie comes out on July 15th, and I always read the book right before the movie comes out, to refresh my memory before I watch it - I've done it with all the Harry Potter books, and plan to do so with all the Twilight books. (I'm not one of those people who gets all bent out of shape if the movie doesn't exactly match the book. I understand that if they were to match exactly, each Harry Potter movie would be exactly 13 hours and 47 minutes long. While I would watch all 13 hours and 47 minutes, most people wouldn't, thereby resulting in the downfall of the studio, and the end to movies based on books.) Then I moved on to Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows. In both of these books, there are deaths that move me to tears every time I read them. I'm fully aware that these are fictional characters, and I know the deaths are coming...but I cry nonetheless. (I am a cryer - books, TV, radio, movies...some commercials. I can't help it.) On our trip to Washington we needed to kill a little time, so we stopped at Barnes & Noble, where I proceeded to purchase Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut & Dracula by Bram Stoker (welcome to my library...and my brain...where completely unrelated items who live together on a shelf reside) both of which I was pretty sure I would never actually finish, because I don't seem able to finish a book lately. The Iliad sits 1/4 finished and sadly neglected on my bookshelf as a testament to this fact...as does The Inferno by Dante.

I put Slaughterhouse Five in my purse, as I had purchased the handy travel version, and proceeded to carry it around with me for these last few weeks, telling myself I would read it when I had time...and when I had time, it would be easy to access in my purse...so I would continue carrying it. Yesterday, Husband & I went to Barnes & Noble to kill some time (this time-killer is always my idea, of course) and when this visit was cut short by his parents utterly annoying habit of telling us one time but changing it to an earlier time at the last minute, I pulled out my handy purse-dwelling companion and dove in, hoping my annoyance would subside by the time we met up with them for lunch. And there, the magic of reading re-visited me.

Kurt Vonnegut's writing is simple, complex, chaotic, disjointed, at times rambling, and somewhat nonsensical at other times...and it's a beautiful thing. He ends 3 out of every 5 paragraphs (no, that is not a firm statistic...just a guess) with the phrase "So it goes." Those paragraphs that don't end with it seem to contain the phrase elsewhere in their being. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is an optometrist who was once abducted by aliens from a planet called Trafalmadore. He was stuck in time, and during World War 2, and his time in Dresden, Germany, became unstuck in time, and seemed to drift from the 40's to the 60's, then to the 50's, then back to the 40's. Mr. Vonnegut uses a descriptive style that can paint a scene as clearly as if I'm looking out my window, but uses no more words than it takes to describe the pair of jeans I'm wearing. All of this...and I'm only on chapter 4. I found myself pulling the book out all day yesterday - in the car after lunch, at my parents house after our Father's Day dinner. During lunch, I couldn't wait to get back in the car so I could read. If I could read & walk at the same time, I would have read on the way from the restaurant to the car. (Had I actually done so, I surely would be posting on a completely different topic today - namely the lovely spill I would have undoubtedly taken down the hills of Old Folsom as I tripped over the sidewalk, and the curb, and the nothingness that occupies the space in front of my feet when I walk and reaches out to send me tumbling)

Today at lunch, I came home from work, fixed my food, and pulled up my floor pillow to the coffee table to delve back into the world of Forks, Washington, where vampires and werewolves and high school girls much clumsier than me dwell. This magical world became a little more magical to me today because of a brief trip I took yesterday to the battlefields of Dresden in World War 2, and the aftermath of an alien abduction to Trafalmadore. Thank you Kurt Vonnegut.

Next on my list is Bram Stoker's Dracula. Or perhaps I should finish The Iliad...or The Inferno...or I'll buy a new book. Alas, when the summer is over, and fall TV comes back to life, I shall find myself with even less time for reading, and my beloved books will nestle themselves back into the comfort of my bookshelves until next summer. So it goes...