I feel guilty. So far in the past 4 months I’ve only re-read books I’ve already read, and I’m about to do it again. A couple weeks ago I finished reading the Mary Russell series for the second time. It has to be my all time favorite series of books and I loved it so much more, and got so much more out of of it reading it again. I could definitely see reading them a third time some day but I should probably wait a few years, though. For now I’ll look forward to reading the 8th book that is coming out in April!
I have stacks and stacks of books that I’ve never read before begging to be read– some by my favorite authors, some classics I want to read, some recommended to me and loaned to me etc. They look great but I just don’t have the head to get into anything new.
During this in-between-book-reading-time, I actually read an entire book on my iPod Touch. With a little app called Stanza, I can download all kinds of classic books for free. So I re-read Anne of Green Gables (one of my favorite books as a kid), just to see if reading without holding a book would change the reading experience. And you know, it really didn’t change it much at all. It might be harder on the eyes, but since I stare at a computer screen 12 hours a day anyway, I didn’t notice. Now I love the fact that I now have over 14 classic books sitting on my iPod waiting for me to read them if I’m stuck in an airport etc, but I think it’s also somehow cheating on the actual books I love so much. I adore bookstores and libraries and pages that smell musty.
So what physical book is in my bag to read on the bus tomorrow? The first book in my other favorite series– Harry Potter. I read it for the first time in August 2007 and since it is nearly 2 years later, I am itching to read them again. I bet they’ll be even better the second time, too.
And I really want to read the Golden Compass series again, but since I read them just last year, I should probably wait a little bit, eh? And maybe read at least a few new books before then.
In other non-fiction related news, I’m back in love with my dissertation again (our relationship is complicated, what can I say) so I’ve been spending hours writing in my little carrel in the library. And I think that I maybe have finally gotten it into my thick skull that writing every single day makes a tremendous difference in, well, everything.
