Reading and just being

A couple of Fridays ago, I had a nap after work. It was a long, glorious nap with the sun shining on me and was a great way to pass a lonely Friday night while Tim was working late. I love naps, but they mean mainly one thing for me – I can’t sleep at night. A two hour nap will set back my bedtime by about four hours!

So, when I headed to bed I brought along with me one of my favourite books – Summer Sisters (Judy Blume). I intended to start to read the book, hang out with Tim when he got home from work (around 11:30pm) and read the book until I could fall asleep somewhere between 2:00am-3:00am. Well, the book reading part happened, but the hanging out with Tim? And the going to bed somewhere between 2:00am-3:00am? Nadda. This was because I couldn’t put the book down. I read, and I read and I read. And 3:00am came around, and then 5:00am, and soon the sun was rising and I was still curled comfortably up in bed reading and then it was 6:30am and I put the book down and realized I had read the whole thing.

And then I finally when to sleep, with the sun peaking in my windows and a cute boy’s heat radiating from his body onto mine, and I literally cuddled with this amazing book I had just read and I went to sleep, happy to have spent the entire evening with three of my favourite things – Tim, a good book and me.

To me, reading a book isn’t just about reading a book. It is feeling the characters emotions, laughing out loud, crying openly, learning something new about myself. I can read the same books over and over (and I often do), because I find that each time I read them, I am in a different place in my life and identify with a different part of the book. Be it a single sentence, or maybe an entire half of the book, but each time a different part speaks to me I feel that not only do I understand the book and the author better, but I can understand that part of me that identifies with the book better.