Girls Who Read

I have not been feeling like myself for some time, and I knew something was missing but didn't know what... until... I picked up a really good book. It has been a very long time that I have just sat and read, read fiction for the pure enjoyment of it, and gotten sucked into a great story. But this book- The Adventures of Buddy Williams- Book 1- is fan-freakin-tastic! So many great metaphors and descriptions, I just can't put it down. That and my friend Bryan sending me this awesome video about Girls Who Read, reminded me that... that's part of who I am- A girl who reads.  And I have been missing that part of my life for way too long lately, just getting caught up with other things. Sometimes, we think reading is not that attractive... but, this video reminds me that actually, it can really be if you really love it.  Somehow, all those characters and places, and lessons, and adventures get absorbed into our bodies like osmosis, and show up like a radiant beam of light- experience, knowledge, word wisdom.  And that can make us feel and look beautiful for ourselves and also to someone else.  I am a girl who reads!
Watch this video. What a creative poem and inspiring message.  (I like the "makes her a total fox" part. Click below and you'll hear what I mean).

What An Astonishing Thing A Book Is...

Thanks for posting this Vince! 

"Sitting around the large coffe table covered with bouquets of flowers, we moved in and out of the novels we read. Looking back, I am amazed at how much we learned without even noticing it. We were, to borrow from Nabakov, to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic eye of fiction."
- Lolita in Tehran- p. 8

..books like men...

"A passionate woman, I like my men and books to knock my socks off. It's got to be love at first sight. I need to be bowled over by an author's insight, to wonder how I lived before the book explained it all to me, or how the author knew me so well.

In reality, while there is often a mystical bond between writer and reader, the author is just trying to figure out his or her own life, on the page, not mine. But as the Irish poet W.B. Yeats once told an admirer of his work, 'If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we are both branches on the same tree.'

So it is with this book. The wonderful writer Katherine Paterson has observed that part of the magic of books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else's life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn't been able to see before."- Sarah Ban Breathnach in Something More.

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."- Franz Kafka

Books are...

"Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more."

— Fulton J. Sheen (Life Is Worth Living: First and Second Series)

The Essential Rumi

On my nightstand is a book housed in an ornate book cover... all different shades of fiery orange designs strategically placed on it. The book is called The Essential Rumi. I bought it in a used bookstore in downtown Vancouver quite few years ago. I was looking for a book of poetry, but I was also looking for something unique, something that was meant to be read and not just shoved away somewhere like some of my books that I tend not to see very often once I have gotten through them the first time.

And luckily, I opened the front cover of this particular book to find a message scrawled out in thin, black letters filling up a whole page- a letter between two friends who were strangers to me, but somehow I feel connected to them now. Maybe it's because I think I needed the message myself. It read:

Sabrina,
Happy Birthday!
Whatever you do, do not put this book on a shelf, or with poetry.
Put it anywhere
- your kitchen, living room, bathroom,
anywhere where you might pick it up some time,
read a poem,
a sentence, a word.
This is not poetry,
It is life, wisdom, love,
insight, enlightenment.
and nothing at all.
Jochem

I have no idea who Sabrina is, but I wonder what varied emotions she must have felt as she read this book. And I think she is lucky to have a friend like Jochem who obviously has a great appreciation for words. He explained the magic in this book better than I could have.

Since I bought it, this message reminds me to pull this book out and allow all the secrets that it holds to spread into my room, providing imagination and depth to me and my surroundings. It was this message that really sold the book to me. I felt like it was meant for me to take, to adorn my bedroom, my life, my days, and to give me words, wisdom and enlightenment to wake up to every morning.

This month, I have been making sure that I read at least one of Rumi's poems each day. It's the first thing I read, the first thoughts that I put into my head, each day. And though I am often tempted to read on, into the next poem, I try to hold myself back. I realize that one a day is more than enough to soak in, ponder, and let slip under my skin and into my thoughts and dreams. Sometimes, even one line of Rumi's is enough to send me dreaming. And I'd like to give those lines time to settle inside and around me.

Thank you to the two strangers whose message drew me to this book even more. Maybe I should write a message in any book I give away so that my words may also attract some new reader, some new eyes who might connect to me and the book before it is even begun. Funny how the message made me feel connected to the people and also the world, just as Rumi's poetry often does... bringing me back to my connection to not only other people, but to the earth and the divine.

If you get a chance, read this book, and the next time you pass on a book, even to a bookstore, write a little message in the front cover. You never know how it might affect or even change someone's life.

Books and authors really do connect people, and so do the people reading their words.