I don't read a whole lot these days. Time was (like, maybe, middle school), you could always find me with a book...though I wasn't as well-read as some of the other geeks. But the reading just sort of dropped off.
I started up again, sort of, after getting married; I reread, for example, the Anne of Green Gables series, and I tried to read the Lord of the Rings series (I managed through the first one, then stalled at the beginning of the second), and I reread the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy (the first one is the best), and I even finished reading some new things, The Time Traveller's Wife and the Harry Potter series.
But I'm not always reading, and lately it has occurred to me why that is.
You see, I'm rereading the Harry Potter books, and they are all I can think about.
It's gotten a little warm. Maybe I should go biking. But no, I'm almost finished with this chapter. I'll just read a little more.
Oh, it's dark now, guess I can't go riding. I should probably figure out what I'm having for dinner, and stop snacking.
Hmm, Sean's home and I haven't worked out dinner yet. Oh well, I can't stop reading now.
Okay, fine, I'm cooking. I'll take a little break to check my Bloglines and the AMRN while I'm eating. ...no, never mind, scratch that, I'm going to eat my fajitas on the couch while I'm reading.
Damn, it's getting late. Let me shut down the computer and go to bed. Okay, here are my clothes for tomorrow. I'll just bring the book in here and read a couple chapters before I go to sleep.
Oh, hmm. I don't want to stop reading, but at this rate I will only get about five hours of sleep. And here's a section ending. I will stop here. I will stop here!
Ugh...I can't get up now. I'll just snooze until 20 minutes before I have to leave, and skip the shower this morning.
Bleh, why didn't I bring the book to work? I'm sooooooooo boooooooooored.
Yeah.
I get a little too caught up, don't I?
The bad thing is, I know what's coming. When I get to the end of Book Five, that'll be it. I'll be done with Harry Potter until July (or until I reread them again). Wrenching myself back out of an imagined world is far more difficult than falling into it; just look how hard it was for me to put the book down long enough to sleep! But once there is literally nothing left for me to read, it will be far worse.
It will be like being in mourning.
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4 comments:
It's a shame that it had to be Harry Potter you got absorbed in, but sometimes shit just happens, eh? ;> But of course, as my wife will attest, I'm not worth anything either when I've got a book to read. Good, bad, mediocre, if I start it, I finish it. And for some reason I have to do it all at once. ;D
Of course, you may not be able to fathom why I wouldn't be excited about Harry Potter, but in the same light, no matter how much I disbelieve, this next bit of information may not excite you at all.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever were written back in the late seventies and early eighties. Six monster books right there for you to read when you run out of books to read. Six incredible character/emotion-driven books that inspired me so much that a song was even written about them. At this point in my "reading" career, there are no other books I would suggest as highly as I would those six books.
Read them, damn it. :>
Oh, and apparently the rights to make movies from those six books has been sold, and the dude that wrote the script for Band of Brothers (Tom Hanks, Steven Spielburg) is doing the switch from print to screen. Of course, no studio's actually bought it yet, and none may ever do so - they'll feel just like the 47 publishing houses (that reaaaaalllly missed out) that didn't take the books at first (when they were taken, of course, they DID become international bestsellers). They don't think we as a people can handle the stories. They don't think we'll like them. It'd be a shame if Thomas Covenant wasn't taken by Hollywood, when there's plenty of completely crappy-ass movies out there these days.
Read the books and see for yourself. I just found out last week that a third Chronicles, to be made up of four books instead of three, is being written. What's better, the first book came out last month. It's in the mail to me right now, and though I may have to wait years for the next one, the idea of MORE Thomas Covenant just might excite me more than anything else I've ever heard of to date in the literary world. ;>
-AJ
You really do like those books, don't you? :>
I will have to read them sometime, I suppose ;>
Those new ones aren't being written by some hack like Kevin J. Anderson, are they? :P
Donaldson's 2 years younger than Dad. He's writing them himself. He had these in mind when he wrote the Second Chronicles, but he's waited twenty years because he felt he needed to improve his talent as a writer before attempting to take them on.
That makes me think they'll be good.
Wow. Yeah.
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