Summer Reading.

I read a lot. Unlike most of my student peers, though, I enjoy it. SRT (silent reading time) during sixth grade? The best part of the day. The Book Fair? Only the best kind of fair out there. A trip to Borders or Barnes & Noble with the prospect of getting a new stack of mind candy? Count me in. I've noticed that sometimes I can't distinguish my own personal real memories or dreams from the stories or lives of characters whom I've read about. Alas, the toll of dull & doldrum required textbook readings and research sources has repressed this once blossoming love. But I will fight for this curs'd romance -- to the death I will fight! Each time I step into that bookstore and look upon the shelves and shelves of novels and collections and stories and volumes of knowledge that I want to drink in, I get excited & overwhelmed, and I start imagining myself tucked away in a cottage somewhere in the mountains just reading my life away. However, on a more practical level, I have made it a personal goal to always be reading for pleasure during the school year. My current project (which I started back in the beginning of Spring Quarter) is The Count of Monte Cristo, unabridged. It was recommended by a friend in my French class: "you have to, have to, have to read this." She even, in her enthusiasm, gave me her own personal copy in class the next day. She graduated that quarter, so I'm not sure how I'll get it back to her, but...I'll figure it out when I get there I suppose. She can't have expected me to finish in time. This lovely monster-of-a-work-of-art consists of 1,243 pages of love, treachery, revenge, hope, suffering, and, AWESOMENESS. I just wanted to share with you readers the proud accomplishment I reached a few days ago:


I'm so close, I can taste it. Joyous will be the day that I reach that final paragraph and that final word. Those final words that Alexander Dumas meticulously sweat over some 200 years ago (written in 1844, wow.) On that day, depending on the time of day, I will shut the book, slowly, thoughtfully, kiss the cover, smile (or cry), call a friend to get shaved ice or ice cream & talk of life and how strange it is --- and then I will go out & rent the movie. After that, I will mention of how the book was so much better. Because I will have earned that right. :)

Edit (September 5, 2009 10:07 pm): Finally finished!