The Neverending Story

"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests, just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."
John Greenleaf Whittier

"We shouldn't teach great books, we should teach a love of reading."
B. F. Skinner

"Some booiks are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
Francis Bacon, Sr.


Books make me happy, in a way that nothing else can. I'm hardwired to need a book almost every waking minute of the day. I'm always reading. When I finish one book, I'll wait a few hours to kind of let that last one soak in and make its impressions on my brain. Then I go pick out a new one. I have a box that's about 2 feet long and a foot and a half wide absolutely filled with paperbacks: two rows deep and some stacked on top. To me, it seems like a treasure chest filled not with jewels and gold coins, but with adventures and intriguing characters.

And escape.

Nothing comforts me like reading. I can turn off the world, forget my problems, worries, sadnesses, and go hunting vampires with Stephen King, catching FTAs with Janet Evanovich, solving mysteries with Robert B. Parker, creating magic--and utter chaos--with Jim Butcher, and, well, um, enjoying vampires with Laurell K. Hamilton. I can run the alleys and hills with Joe Grey and Dulcie in Shirley Rousseau Murphy's mystery-solving cat series. I can dig down deep into the evidence with Lincoln Rhyme in Jeffery Deaver's forensic mystery novels. I can be amazed and stunned by the oddities Special Agent Pendergast goes up against in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's adventure epics.

I can be who or what or where or even when I want to be. All in a book.

And no, a Kindle just isn't the same.