A Little Bit of Reading

I write constantly, and have since I was a young girl. It's a great release. The other half of that is reading. Being raised on a farm, there wasn't much entertainment unless you made it, so I spent hours every day reading. I read from almost every genre ... usually in blocks. During my youngest days, I ready mysteries, especially Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and a Western, here and there. Believe it or not, when I saw the Nancy Drew movie was coming out, I couldn't wait to see it. Unfortunately, my kids didn't have my nostalgia, so I still haven't gotten a chance to watch it.

Later, I turned to horse books, with the Black Stallion series being my favorite. I read anything with a horse in it. I still cherish the memories of those books. I tried collecting the whole black stallion series, but those books weren't made for long-term use and degraded. What little remained of them was destroyed when my children went through similar reading phases and claimed my books.

During junior high I got into science fiction with the likes of Isaac Asimov and others. I spent my TV time with the same: Dr. Who, Star Trek (the original series), the Outer Limits, etc. I loved how they made me think. I still do.

Then came high school and all the emotional upheaval it entails. Feeling sheltered and less than popular, I turned to the lives of others for stimulation in innumerable autobiographies and biographies. If not those, I'd be reading paranormal scholastic books. I loved "Witch of Blackbird Pond," and others like it. Reading helped me escape the tedium of my farm-life.

Towards my junior and senior years, I became a romance fanatic. I couldn't get enough. I read hundreds of them a year, if not more. I'd check out 25 at a time and return them within a week. Eventually, the library ran out of new books to offer and I started scratching around for something else.

In college, I didn't have the time or inclination to read romances ... and that was pretty much how it stayed for the next 20 years. For that matter, I stopped reading for pleasure almost entirely. Maybe I burned out. Maybe the storylines had become to mundane and predictable to be enjoyable. Maybe I was emotionally satisfied and didn't feel I needed it anymore. I don't know. It just happened.

So why do I bring this up? Last week, after more than 20 years without pleasure reading, other than the occasional Harry Potter (and of course, the DiVinci Code), I read four books in four days -- and they were romances at that. I still feel slightly nauseaus when I see a Harlequin or anything of that narcissistic caliber, but I love the paranormal romances where romance is only part of the story and not the whole story. I enjoyed it so much that I've reserved about a dozen more books like it.

It feels good to read again on, many levels. It helps me see new and different ways to express myself. It is much better than most of the crap on TV. It is a "guilty" pleasure ... and I like those (as seen by anyone who has read, "WANTED: Sex Partner for Short-Term Monogamous Relationship"). And it lets me get lost in another world that can't be remotely possible.

With my dry streak ended, I hope to become an even better writer and a much more experimental one.