Calaidescope World

We Are What We Read

...and I'm a dragon-riding warrior priestess. My books are my children and I love them dearly. Which is strange considering how much I hated to read as a child. I only started "reading" during the summer before I started going to university. It was the DragonLance series that got me hooked. And over the years, I have developed the ability to read as many as 8 books at a time and not lose the plot of a single one. Right now, I'm reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon. It's really good, but it's just so long (as is often the case with Arthurian legends)! So in between chapters, I was able to re-read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (the author's name escapes me) plus a few magazines.

Here's a link to an article Jeanette Winterson wrote for The Times.

http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=377

I hope the link works. If not, click on Jeanette Winterson under my Family, Friends and Favorites list. When you get to her webiste, click on Journalism, then select The books we choose to keep. She really has an uncanny way of expressing things we normally can't explain.

I find this part so true: "Often, it is a question of sensibility. The books we love say something about us, and about our friends. Scanning someone’s bookshelf can tell you as much as reading their diary. The quickest way to intimacy is not to share a bed or a holiday, but to share a book."

Also, "Am I suspicious of people who have few books? Well, yes, I am, not because I wonder if they are shallow and stupid, but because with such people I don’t know how to read between the lines." I laughed out loud at that one. What can I do? I'm only human, ergo, am somewhat prejudiced. Plus I live in my own fantasy world.

posted by Calai @ 8:19 AM