samuel.bowles.es

I used to love reading. I would sit and read books for hours at a sitting, completely engrossed in another world. But it's been years since this was the case. Sure, I've read the occasional novel here and there but I haven't been a consistent reader since before high school. Somehow it just seemed life got in the way. Ever since those days when I read on a regular basis I've longed to go back there, reading one book after another. Becoming one character then the next, traveling from distant land to distant land.

A switch flipped a few days back (Wednesday of last week to be exact) and the thirst overwhelmed my stupid excuses about life being too busy. I'm reading again, obsessively reading. I've read three and one quarter novels in the span of a week and I have two more keeping the bench warm. I've moved effortlessly from The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans to Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and on toward the middle of Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup. George Orwell is waiting his turn and maybe some nonfiction after that.

I'm not sure what changed and why it happened so suddenly. Is it that I am surrounded by another language and these are worlds that I can retreat to? Is it all the travel I am doing by subway around the city? Is it the fact that I have been studying the English language for the past month as a mathematical fact and I just wanted to remember the romance of it all? Is it that I want to write again and this time the road seems to run through all these books? I don't know - maybe all of these things - maybe none but I'm obsessed with books again.

It kind of startles Robyn to see me get so focused on things like this I think. Sometimes it looks like I am tinkering with the edges of sanity the way I dive into things headlong. One day I'm happy to read a book every four months the next it seems entirely neccissary that I read at least three per week. It feels like I have to catch up to something, someone? Me?

Anyway here's a very brief review/rating of what I've read in the past week:

The Horse Whisperer (0 of 5) : Absolute crap, don't bother. I read it because I was trapped on a island (literally) without another English book to read. I thought when I picked it up that it was another book about another horse that's in another movie right about now: Seabiscuit.

Lullaby (4 of 5) : A really good book with a fascinating premise, bizarre twists, and a very unique voice. I like the way Palahniuk balanced the comedy of the situation with the horror of it all. I also thought the characters in this book were a little easier to sympathize with that those in Fight Club. I'm still not sure which of the two I like better though.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (5 of 5) : Wow. This was a powerful, funny, moving story. I haven't seen the movie but I'm looking forward to seeing what they've done with these characters. The scene doesn't change much through the whole book so it's almost entirely character development. There are some plot twists here and there but for the most part you are carefully brought into the interior life of a lunatic and asked to live there for the duration of the story, learning to love his mind more and more with each page.

I'll finish reading the others before I speak about them. Anyway, I've got to get back to my book.