This is shot 6 in my attempt at the 365 Days Project at Flickr.
These are the books currently on my list to tackle. And my very ugly feet (which explains the “let’s use cross-process so they look like stone” option I took in editing this shot). In the interest of complete disclosure, I’ll confess to photo-editing my toe hair out of the shot.
I have been a bookworm for as long as I can remember. Admittedly, any “classics” I’ve read have floated their way out of my head, while crap like Breaking Dawn is emblazoned in there. But I digress. I was the kid who begged her mom to let her buy a book or three from the Scholastic book club in third grade. I was the girl who proudly brought her star-laden BookIt! card to pizza hut so she could eat a personal pan pizza as a reward for all of those pages she’d devoured. I loved Reading Rainbow and tuned in every day to see which books LeVar Burton wanted me to read this time. I watched the general public freak out about some kid called Harry Potter, only joining the love train around the fourth book in. It was all over at that point. I was sunk.
As much as I let my brain rot in front of the computer and the television, books will always hold a huge chunk of my heart. As a writer myself, I can’t help but get excited when a story is really good - you know the kind, where you can’t put the book down, even though you’ve been reading it all day and it’s suddenly 3am and you have work in the morning. I love to sink my teeth into a Stephen King novel, shaking my head, declaring him a “sick fucker” (meant in the best way possible). I find biographies interesting. I keep lists of books I’d like to read - or at least, I do now, seeing as everytime I go to the library, my brain goes blank and I have no idea what the fifty books I’d like to check out are.
I have a temperament that craves escapism, and books allow me to do that. Real people or imagined characters. Proven studies or recipes for dinner. Okay, those who know my lack of enthusiasm for research or cooking might not believe that last statement, but there is truth in it. You can jump into almost any page and forget about your own troubles for awhile. The trick is to stick the landing when you jump back out.