I discovered a previously-untapped talent today… I can knit while I read! It’s a shocking and exciting discovery, and of course I can’t do anything too involved, but it definitely works, and it’s nice to not just feel like I’m sitting there like a lump while I’m reading a book.
I grew up “a reader”, one of those kids who had her nose perpetually buried in a book. I missed half my real-life childhood, I think, because I was immersed in fictitious lives and characters… Every now and then I’d notice this, like when my parents would send me in the car with people who were coming over to dinner from church, and I was supposed to direct them to our house… only I had NO idea how to get there, because I was always reading when we drove anywhere!
Anyway, since the dawning of the Internet in my life, and my continual access to cable TV, and my enjoyment of things that keep my hands busy (knitting, that is, lately), reading has reached a back-burner place. I didn’t realize how much I missed it, until I picked up a couple of books yesterday and blew through both of them in one sitting. Oh. I must have been missing this escape into the worlds of books. I read through another tonight and found it delightful.
The very things that you get irritated by in movies are generally much better in books… there’s more plot development, more character development, things are messy and sometimes surprising, and it takes more intelligence and attention to follow what’s happening. Of course, you’ve got 10x more space to develop this kind of thing in a book, so except for trying to create an evocative visual, books generally have movies beat, hands-down.
I think I’m going to have to make a point not to let my time get snatched away from my books, because there’s something restorative to a long reading jag that you can’t match with anything else. That slightly dazed feeling you get when you emerge from the end of a gripping story and remember, “oh yeah! This is my life!” really has no comparison, except perhaps for waking from a particularly interesting dream. I’ve missed it–and I didn’t even realize it until now.
Posted by Kjirstin 
