pen in hand

As an English major, I spent considerable time marking books. It was for my own good, of course, but I also love finding little nuggets of beauty or truth buried deep in a novel. Truth be told, I was marking books before I started being graded to do so. However, since my exit from school, I haven't found myself reading with pen or pencil in hand very often. This is probably because I'm reading too fast (I'm a chronic skimmer, it's bad, and there's always something else I should be doing, you know, like changing a diaper or something). It might also be because the number of books I read has plummeted. Sometimes I long for the days when reading was required. Or the days when I was small enough that my biggest accomplishment was finishing a chapter book and I didn't feel guilty for it.

This year, I want to try and read more. This may mean I read two books all year, but I want to make the effort. I sincerely believe there aren't many things that are better for your mind than reading. Books hold worlds and dreams and ideas. There is nothing like a room full of books to inspire a person.

The first week of the year, I read Forest Born, the fourth book in a series of fantasy type children's literature by Shannon Hale (I've previously read the other three). And I found myself lost in their beautiful Forest world. I was particularly caught up in the thoughts of the main character, Rin, a person I'm sure I would've been friends with, a person I could understand so well. I love good children's literature - the simple complexity, stories woven with such precision that both a child and adult can fall into their pages.

Just yesterday, I finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. And for the first time in years, I read with a pen in hand. It's a novel told entirely through letters. Beautiful letters that speak so perfectly of heartache, love, despair, and with the most precise blend of wit and humor.The letters tell the story of a (fictional) author, Juliet, who finds unlikely friendships in a group of people who live in Guernsey, a city in the Channel Islands that was occupied by the German during World War II. The book takes place after the war, and the letters are a beautiful collection of their memories. Of course, the story is also one of Juliet and how she is changed by these people and their beautiful Guernsey.

I am in love with this book. Some of its passages were so perfectly crafted I wanted to eat them. I loved the format - the letters allow the characters, each of them instead of just one narrator, to speak so freely and with parenthetical asides that made me smile. I long to go to Guernsey and meet these (fictional) people, live in their world of survival and love. And so I plan on turning around and reading this book again. I can't wait to go back. With a pen in hand, of course.