Reading has always been my favorite pastime, my internal refuge and my method of escape to places and worlds beyond our reality or into the minds or lives of the past. A good book is a doorway to another life or place, and as you open the pages, you step through and become absorbed wholly into a well written story, consumed by the next page, and the next and the next.
A good book allows you to internally live as the characters in it, to feel their joy and pain, to anxiously await their next move, to worry about what fate has in store for them in the end.
The greatest joy is to find a book that will not let you go, that you cannot put down because you must know what happens next...all the way to the end of the story and beyond. Who doesn't have a book that haunts them still, standing at the precipice that is the end of the written story and jumping off into the imaginary beyond, longing for more.
A good travel book can help you to go places you have never yet been, to smell the air and see the colors of a land far away from where you may be in the moment. It is more than planning a trip or wishing for adventure, a well-written travel book takes you on an internal journey through your own soul as you walk the path of another across a foreign landscape.
I tend to be voracious in my reading habits: mysteries, classics, travel, science fiction, fantasy, children's books, nonfiction - especially cookbooks and history treatises - you name it, I am likely to be reading it if it is a good read. (Since the breast cancer diagnosis last year, my cookbook reading has been along more healthy lines, for obvious reasons. Any good suggestions for nutrient-filled recipe cookbooks are always appreciated.)
At the moment, and in no particular order, here is what I'm reading:
-- Queen Victoria by Elizabeth Longford
-- Joy of Zentangle: Drawing Your Way to Increased Creativity, Focus, and Well-Being
-- The South Beach Diet Gluten Solution: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Gluten-Aware Plan for Losing Weight and Feeling Great--FAST!
-- Divergent by Veronica Roth
-- The Perfect Husband: An FBI Profiler Novel by Lisa Gardner
But I am always looking for something new to add to the "to read" pile. Are you reading anything good at the moment? If so, please do tell...
(Photo via Abhi Sharma.)
3 comments:
If you like historical fiction, I can recommend (1) Wolf Hall and (2) Bring Up the Bodies, both by Hilary Mantel. There is a third one in the works. Some books are best enjoyed by listening, and that was the case with these two. If you like Tudor England, you might like these.
Ooooh, will have to look for these. We have an audible app on my iPhone -- wil have to see if either of these is available. Thanks!
It's a series, so get Wolf Hall first.
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