Reading.

I grew up doing lots of it. Loved it. But, as an adult I did it less and in the last couple years I've done very little of it (aside from the Stephanie Plum books Evie let me borrow when I was traveling for work. Wait, what? in my google search for a link, I saw they are making a movie! It could be a good movie, but Heigl is lame.) Anyway, through a Facebook post, I volunteered myself to read something two of my co-workers loved. I did not love it. (but would be happy to talk about it with anyone who did...) Because I borrowed it from someone, I wanted to make sure to read it and get it back quickly (Sorry Evester, I know I've had your books since like, 1977, but this is a different type of friend. You know, one who I've never hung out with naked in the slot machine room and one where the word "poop" never comes up. The kind where you feel like you don't want to have something of theirs for very long.)

BUT (and I have a point) I kind of liked forcing myself to read a book. I'm not going to jump into a bookclub or anything (sorry Jill). but I'm going to try to start reading again. My goal is to always have a book that I'm working on. If someone says "what are you reading?" I'll have an answer. It also means that I'm going to request that all you reader friends email books that you really like (unless you loved Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in which case warn me before you send your titles)

To inspire myself, I'm going to grab the best book that's ever been written, ever: Imajica by Clive Barker. I know that I will never be hesitant to read it, even though I've done so about 20 times. It will change my life while I travel the pages, as every Clive Barker book does, and I will look forward to the escape into his world and losing myself in his words. I have to give complete credit of this discovery to John, who introduced me to the book and it's author. We had known each other for a very short time when he brought me his book to borrow. He walked in with this thick, worn hardcover and said "I think you'll like this." We barely knew each other. I was in love in the first chapter (with the book, and with John. But that's another story :)) It's a long book and I found myself rationing pages at the end, trying to prolong the experience as long as I could. As soon as I finished, I started down the author path and immediately jumped from Clive book to Clive book until I'd hit all that I'd found.

I never did give John his book back :)