Books

Back in 2003, my friend Barbara sent me a copy of All Creatures Great and Small.  It wasn't until last fall that I finally began reading it, and this was after reading James Herriot's other books (borrowed from the same Barbara).  I love his books.  I love his stories, his descriptions, his sense of humor.  I thoroughly enjoy the anecdotes about singular animals and their owners as well as the challenges of a country vet in rural England.  I have books in line to read after this one, but I keep putting it down and picking it back up, sometimes weeks later, to make it last longer. 

I have always enjoyed reading.  I prided myself as a kid when one of the librarians at school gave me permission to choose from any section of the library I wanted, not just from the books deemed age appropriate for my grade.  I read classic children's books and nature manuals about things like sharks and raccoons repeatedly.  As I got older, I moved on to novels, poetry and short story anthologies.  Now I'll read pretty much any genre, but too often I can't seem to find the time to delve into the pages of a new book or finish a half read one.  

One of my supervisors asked a woman at work some weeks back what she would do if she won the lottery and no longer had to work.  She replied that she would read books.  Wouldn't it be nice to have all the time you needed to devour novel after novel, biography after biography, anthology after anthology and so on if you could?  With no worries about a sleep schedule or grocery shopping or laundry or getting to work on time?  It's a nice little fantasy perhaps, but the bottom line is that I would like to find time to read more than magazines, on-line articles and bead books.  They have their value, but they're not nearly as pleasurable as a book in your hands that is so good you're willing to draw it out for weeks or forgo enough sleep over a few nights to finish it!

Next on my list to read:
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi & Holly Black