So, I like to fancy myself a misanthrope, and say that the reason I don't talk to people is because I don't like people. The truth is that people terrify me. I've told a few people that they intimidate me, and they laugh and say they're not intimidating, so I laugh in return and tell them I'm intimidated by everyone. They think I'm joking.
People expect things from me that I usually have no idea how to give them. Everyone from complete strangers to acquaintances, coworkers, relatives, friends... they all expect things and honestly I'm usually so baffled by what those various things are that I invariably let them down. And for someone whose primary motivator is guilt, that's a terrible thing to face. Not to mention that as soon as anyone discovers this quirk of mine, I become the most ridiculously easy person to manipulate, so I've discovered it's safer for me to avoid human interaction as much as possible.
Books on the other hand... Books are gloriously peaceful objects. They neither expect nor demand anything from you other than your attention. I have never been made to feel guilty by a book. (The contents of one, perhaps, but never the book itself.) In my About Me blurb I called books "my refuge and my sanctuary" and I have taken advantage of that sanctuary more than once after an upsetting or confusing or hurtful interchange with another human.
It's interesting how reading is a solitary action. And so is writing. And yet neither could exist without the other. The last thing that happened to me this weekend that made me decide to try out this blog experiment idea was that for the first time my reading bubble was breached.
I've been on Goodreads since November, and decided around March to start writing reviews of the books I'm reading so that I can help myself remember them later (as mentioned in the previous post: I have such a terrible memory!). So I've been oblivously leaving review after review, generally forgetting that they're out there for other people to see and no longer just in my head.''
This weekend, I read two books by a new-to-me author and I was surprised by how much I ended up loving them. When I read books in a series, I like to write up the review for the first before I read the second so it's not colored by the other book. So, Sunday, I wrote my review for the first book and ended up reading the entire second book that day as well since it was amazing enough I didn't want to put it down. When I went to write my review for that 2nd book, I found out that the author had liked my review and commented on it. I thought "that's nice of her" and wrote my review of the 2nd book.
I've had a few moments in my life when I've heard or read exactly the words I needed to hear at exactly the time I needed to hear them, and I guess my reviews were that for this author. She sent me a message Sunday night thanking me for what I'd said and telling me how much she'd been in need of reassurance and that my words were something she very much needed to hear. Her message said:
"Sometimes it's difficult to know if you're touching readers the way you *want* to touch them. As wonderful and fulfilling as it is to write, it can be lonely and isolating to be an author... Your words really touched me. I can't describe the feeling of connection moments like this bring, but it's so incredible and amazing."
So, yes, reading is a solitary activity. As is writing. But this weekend I've been thinking about the connections we make through books, and I'm wondering if they might not be among the more intimate between humans. An author puts her ideas, her emotions, her thoughts together into a story and then sends that story out into the world, hoping it's understood and appreciated. A reader interprets the ideas, emotions and thoughts in her own way, unavoidably adding her own as she goes, and something magical is created. Whether the experience be a good one or a bad one, the moment a reader opens a book, a connection is formed.
So maybe I don't need to beat myself up so much for running away from people and into books for all of these years. Maybe I've been connecting all along, in my own terrified, misanthropic way.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Why
If I've been a book addict almost as long as I can remember, why start trying to analyze it now? A few things happened to me this weekend that made me look at my adoration of books in new ways, and I'm still trying to process all of the ramifications. It's always been easier for me to process in writing, otherwise my mind gets stuck wandering in circles. Thus, the blog.
Okay, so now for what happened. You know how you can travel along in life with nothing eventful, life-changing, or even thought-provoking happening for a long, long while and then out of nowhere planets align, stars converge, and things happen? Things that may not even have made an impact at another time, or paired with different events, but that when they happen in the way and at the time that they do, they all but FORCE you to stop and think and breathe and analyze. Yeah, that was my weekend.
First, I've been reading the hilarious and amazing Jennifer Armintrout's blog for a while now, and on Friday she posted about when she learned to read and how amazing that felt. She ended with this paragraph:
"I will never forget how awesome that feeling was. I could read. It was all going to be downhill from there, because I could read. In the end, maybe that's what we're all looking for when we pick up a book. Reading is like a drug addiction, we're always chasing that greater high, trying to find a book that makes us feel as awesome as our favorites did. And I think that feeling is probably inspired by how we felt the very first time we realized that we had become readers."
That was IT! I had known for years that I was a book addict, but I had never thought that the reason was that I was trying to re-create that feeling I had when I first learned to read. That connection staggered me, and for the first time in my reclusive and antisocial history, I left a comment on someone's blog.
See, I also remember the moment I realized I could read. I have an astoundingly few memories of my childhood, to the point where I often wonder if my subconscious has taken an active role in deleting some of them. But this one I've managed to hold on to. I can still remember what the book looked like. (Sadly, it's a series that my mom chose to purge long before I told her how much I'd have liked to keep them, so I now no longer even have any idea of the name.) I almost remember what the pictures looked like. But what I remember most of all is that all of a sudden those little marks below the pictures suddenly seemed to swim into focus, and suddenly I WAS READING!
I also remember feeling like the whole world was open to me now, and that feeling has never left. I can go anywhere in a book: anywhere on earth or any number of other worlds, back or forward in time, anywhere someone's imagination could go, I could now join them. It's so hard to find words for that feeling: awe and excitement and humility and freedom and POWER and gratitude and wonder.
Looking at it that way, is it any wonder that I've spent my life looking to re-experience that feeling?
The second thing that happened this weekend is that I GOT THERE! Or as close as I've come in years. On Thursday, one of my Goodreads friends posted reviews of the last two books in Jordan Castillo Price's Channeling Morpheus/Sweet Oblivion series. I read the blurb for the first book and decided I HAD to try this out. I bought the first, Payback, on Thursday night just to be sure I'd love it as much as I expected I would before buying the whole series (yes, working from experience there... /sigh). As I expected (and hoped) I LOVED it and I bought the other nine books first thing Friday morning.
I then proceeded to spend nearly all of Friday and all of Saturday completely lost (immersed, absorbed,... whatever adjective means I lost track of reality completely) in the crazy, amazing, fucked-up, and beautiful relationship of Michael and Wild Bill. My god, what a ride that was! The last book, Elixir, is honestly one of the most breathtakingly romantic books of all time. I'm still reeling from it, to the point that I haven't been able to even gather my thoughts enough to write a coherent review of it. But that book, at the end of that series, is EXACTLY why I have spent my life reading.
Books let us see and feel and experience things that we don't often get to in real life. Or, if we do, it's in a much more diluted state than we can get in books. I got to read about months (years?) in the lives of these two characters, and watch them grow from the jaded, cynical, untrusting, emotionally closed-off, terrified people they were at the start into the (with each other) open, trusting, selfless, compassionate people they became in that last book. All in the space of 48 hours.
That is beautiful, and powerful, and awe-inspiring and humbling. THAT is why I read.
Okay, so now for what happened. You know how you can travel along in life with nothing eventful, life-changing, or even thought-provoking happening for a long, long while and then out of nowhere planets align, stars converge, and things happen? Things that may not even have made an impact at another time, or paired with different events, but that when they happen in the way and at the time that they do, they all but FORCE you to stop and think and breathe and analyze. Yeah, that was my weekend.
First, I've been reading the hilarious and amazing Jennifer Armintrout's blog for a while now, and on Friday she posted about when she learned to read and how amazing that felt. She ended with this paragraph:
"I will never forget how awesome that feeling was. I could read. It was all going to be downhill from there, because I could read. In the end, maybe that's what we're all looking for when we pick up a book. Reading is like a drug addiction, we're always chasing that greater high, trying to find a book that makes us feel as awesome as our favorites did. And I think that feeling is probably inspired by how we felt the very first time we realized that we had become readers."
That was IT! I had known for years that I was a book addict, but I had never thought that the reason was that I was trying to re-create that feeling I had when I first learned to read. That connection staggered me, and for the first time in my reclusive and antisocial history, I left a comment on someone's blog.
See, I also remember the moment I realized I could read. I have an astoundingly few memories of my childhood, to the point where I often wonder if my subconscious has taken an active role in deleting some of them. But this one I've managed to hold on to. I can still remember what the book looked like. (Sadly, it's a series that my mom chose to purge long before I told her how much I'd have liked to keep them, so I now no longer even have any idea of the name.) I almost remember what the pictures looked like. But what I remember most of all is that all of a sudden those little marks below the pictures suddenly seemed to swim into focus, and suddenly I WAS READING!
I also remember feeling like the whole world was open to me now, and that feeling has never left. I can go anywhere in a book: anywhere on earth or any number of other worlds, back or forward in time, anywhere someone's imagination could go, I could now join them. It's so hard to find words for that feeling: awe and excitement and humility and freedom and POWER and gratitude and wonder.
Looking at it that way, is it any wonder that I've spent my life looking to re-experience that feeling?
The second thing that happened this weekend is that I GOT THERE! Or as close as I've come in years. On Thursday, one of my Goodreads friends posted reviews of the last two books in Jordan Castillo Price's Channeling Morpheus/Sweet Oblivion series. I read the blurb for the first book and decided I HAD to try this out. I bought the first, Payback, on Thursday night just to be sure I'd love it as much as I expected I would before buying the whole series (yes, working from experience there... /sigh). As I expected (and hoped) I LOVED it and I bought the other nine books first thing Friday morning.
I then proceeded to spend nearly all of Friday and all of Saturday completely lost (immersed, absorbed,... whatever adjective means I lost track of reality completely) in the crazy, amazing, fucked-up, and beautiful relationship of Michael and Wild Bill. My god, what a ride that was! The last book, Elixir, is honestly one of the most breathtakingly romantic books of all time. I'm still reeling from it, to the point that I haven't been able to even gather my thoughts enough to write a coherent review of it. But that book, at the end of that series, is EXACTLY why I have spent my life reading.
Books let us see and feel and experience things that we don't often get to in real life. Or, if we do, it's in a much more diluted state than we can get in books. I got to read about months (years?) in the lives of these two characters, and watch them grow from the jaded, cynical, untrusting, emotionally closed-off, terrified people they were at the start into the (with each other) open, trusting, selfless, compassionate people they became in that last book. All in the space of 48 hours.
That is beautiful, and powerful, and awe-inspiring and humbling. THAT is why I read.
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