Books

Books have been an important part of my life as long as I can remember. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of sitting on my dad's lap, reading a book about sleeping animals and stumbling over the phrase "Sheep sleep" -- well, you try saying that three times fast! One time, after my brother and I had spent all day inside reading, my mom kicked us out for some "fresh air," and we  just plopped down on the front lawn on top of our sleds and continued to read. I must have read my favorite book, The Giver, at least two dozen times.

And yet, when I got older, something happened to me that has happened to a lot of people: I stopped reading. Well, not really -- I was studying at Rice, and I reading more than ever before. But after hours or poring over badly-scanned PDF pages about Finno-Urgic agglutinative morphemes or vowel length in Bantu languages, all you really want to do is sink into the couch and watch Friends until your brains slowly ooze out of your ears. Coffee, TV, an friends slowly monopolized my increasingly limited free time, and books fell by the wayside.

Then I joined the Peace Corps, and everything changed. For the first time in many years, I had no coffee and no TV, but I did have enormous amounts of free time. So I picked up a book (I, Robot) and read it. I liked it, so I read another one (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and I liked that one too.

Then I set a goal for myself: A hundred and one books in two years. And I got to reading.

This morning, two years and many pages later, I closed the cover on the last book. Yes, I've finished, with 29 days to spare! I've read fiction and non-fiction, history, biography, comedy, tragedy, short stories and monstrosities -- and all were first-time reads.

Phew!

I'd like to take a moment to thank Mrs H., who, aside from sending me several books that I particularly enjoyed, has always been so supportive and kind. She taught me from a young age to love books, and always has fantastic book suggestions. Thanks for teaching me to love reading!

I hope that, wherever life takes me from here, I will be able to make time to keep reading. I probably won't be able to read quite this much, but I'd like to think that I'll be able to take an hour out here and there for a good read. There really isn't anything else like it!

Hey, when was the last time you read a good book?