The Bookworm... Returns

Otherwise Known as Keeping Brick and Mortar Bookstores in Business...

In my last post, I wrote about how I had read The Hunger Games, and subsequently saw the movie over the weekend.  Friends and colleagues had long extolled the virtues of The Hunger Games, but just as I had with Harry Potter, I stubbornly resisted. 

Why would I want to spend my free time, away from children, or teenager, reading books that appealed to them?

Because, no matter what age group they are written for, they are amazing books, that's why.

My parents started reading to me from the time I came out of the womb.  (Which I think is amazing, considering they both hate to read!)  My mother loves to tell me that the first time she saw me reading on my own, at age five, I was... on the toilet.  (I know, I know, TMI!  It's one of my mom's favorite stories!!!)  She also loves to tell me that from that point on, until I was about twelve, she didn't see my face... because I was always... reading.

Reading is the reason I have a somewhat stellar vocabulary.  Reading is probably the reason I am in love with all things exotic.  Reading took me everywhere, and anywhere... and I loved it.  I was especially fond of Nancy Drew books, the classics with the yellow spine, from third grade on. My dad's mom bought a set at a garage sale that kept me going all summer in 1984.  I was very lucky to have a family so supportive of books, and reading.

I still gaze at those classic yellow-spined Nancy Drews on eBay.  I don't buy... being content with gazing at my memories, and the vicarious adventures they gave me.

The magic of Harry Potter and the dystopian Hunger Games, and yes, even the Twilight saga, which I read with a group of first grade teachers in an exceptionally fun if not terribly intellectual book club, have given me what was taken by thousands of pages of mandatory reading during my year as a graduate student.  (One must be thoroughly versed in not only theory but also best practices in counseling methods, after all!!!) 

Reading, once again, has become a way to travel, and transport my terribly pedestrian (and yet meaningful!) life.  This evening, on my way back from an appointment in Jubilation, a town engineered by Disney itself, I stopped at Books-a-Million to buy a journal as well as the next installment of the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire.  I ended up buying two journals, one for my private thoughts, and one for my travel adventures, as well as Catching Fire, which they only had in hardcover because Scholastic fortuitously maintains the softcover rights (and the salesperson graciously gave me the information to order said book from Scholastic directly!).... by the time I had three books in my hands I was in full-on browsing mode, and happened upon a book for which I had seen a movie preview prior to watching the cinematic version of The Hunger Games.

The preview had us in in stitches, with jaws dropped in disbelief.  The title of the movie?  (Directed by none other than Tim Burton!)  Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter.  I am NOT kidding!!!  And the kicker is that the book the movie originated from a book that is by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Now, that's a book I want to read.

But you know what?  I'll be reading Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter first, since BAM didn't carry P &P and Zombies. 

I am thrilled that my inner-bookworm has risen from the dead. 

Addendum:  The author wishes those readers in My Small Town to contact her through FB if they might be interested in forming a mini-book club that meets every three months or so.  Life is to short not to read great books, and talk about them, together.