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After way too long, I'm becoming a reader again

A pandemonium of parrots has taken residence in the tree across the street, and I am trying to embrace their noise and chaos.

Dear Friends,

I have a confession to make: I haven’t been reading much.

After becoming a mother, I fell out of the habit of consuming books, and as years went on, it became easier to prioritize other things over reading.

I used to devour books, though. I always had a book in my bag and a few more on hold at the library. I spent hours zigzagging the shelves at Borders and filling my shelves with my favorites. There were many nights that I stayed up way too late because I had to read just one more page. It was not unusual for me to obsess over a book. I even nearly postponed my first date with Rama, because I was so engrossed in the final pages of Kavalier & Clay as my train pulled in to the stop where we were meeting.*

I missed that voracious bookworm of a girl, and last year, I decided to find her.

There were a few false starts, but a gripping novel helped get the momentum going. I found myself diving into the next one on my list. I started reading poetry in my betweentimes. I began and finished a graphic novel before bedtime. I remembered that it it’s okay to quit a book you’re not into so you can try another one you might like better. Now I’m cataloging the books that I once read and loved and logging books I’m excited to read next.

Every book, I’m rediscovering, is a time machine. Each one transports me to another time and place. And while I may not remember some of the stories themselves, I do remember what I was doing when I was consuming the book or how it made me feel afterward.

Last Friday as I neared the end of the latest book, I found myself gripped once more by a story and unable to let the characters go. When Henry and Maira came home from school, it was tough to shift my attention to them, because the story was suspended in the back of my mind, swirling with questions of why and what then.

After dinner, I excused myself, shut the bedroom door, and crawled into bed so I finally could see what happened with my friends Sam and Sadie. The first tear that fell down my cheek caught me by surprise. But then my eyes welled up with tears, and the tears kept coming.

I don’t know if I was crying because of what was happening in the book, or if I was weeping because I was finding a way back to myself. Probably a little bit of both.

xo Christine

*I did not postpone, but I did tell him all about the book over a cup of coffee.

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Good Things

• Being “weirded in” instead of “weirded out”

• How it usually only takes five minutes to clear a table but feels so good afterward

• Pretty fruit stickers

• When the daffodils open up and how they brighten the room

• Renting a move on Hoopla for free

• Made-up songs and lyrics

• The Cloud Report zine

• Eyebrow maintenance

• Making a jar of pickled onions, then topping tostadas with them

• Connecting with the giveaway winner who, it turns out, has been following me for 20+ years. Wait, what?!

It only took me years to realize I could use a rubberband to fix our broken remote control instead of every kind of tape I tried.

Good Quote

Good Deed of the Day

Share your favorite book with a friend. My friend Sidra gave me her copy of The Midnight Library after finishing and loving it, which made reading it last year even more special to me.