When I was four years old, perhaps a little younger, I learned how to read. I remember Friday afternoons spent on our old leather couch under the scratchy white blanket with a book; even more satisfyingly when those Friday afternoons were rainy. I remember my first bookshelf, which I still have- it's a study old thing and will outlive the bookshelves I've bought since. (There is still nothing better than the sight of a bookshelf crammed with books, nor is there a better insight into the intellectual life and growth of a person.) I remember both the daring and comfort of a new book- adventure and entertainment without leaving the living room. My life was great because of books.
It wasn't just the escape of the story that beckoned to me, there was the physical object of the book too. Many people who were part of my life at the time can attest to walking into a room and seeing me sitting there with my nose buried deeply within the pages of a book, inhaling like my life depended on it. As I grew, I read in the car. I wrote my own stories, in several different shades of Magic Marker, and stapled the pages together to pass around. I got lost in bookstores, libraries, the Bookmobile. I carried around at least three books with me at all times.
When I finally reached the age where I was college-bound, it seemed natural that I become an English major. The world had changed since I was a child, but I hadn't. We were facing one great digital revolution, people wringing their hands about the fate of publishing (hands are still wringing), a tough economy that recognized the validity of choosing such a major about as much as my other more rational-minded and critical peers ("Haha, what are you going to do with a BA in English?") but I couldn't see myself in any other line. It was working with books and languages, or nothing. Call me crazy but I had been taught to play to my strengths, and my strengths were literary analysis and writing. I was mediocre and bored in math, most of the sciences (and to top it off, squeamish about blood so doctoring was out), nervous about public speaking, and no great shakes at other creative potential careers (though I suppose acting or painting wouldn't have been any more practical than my chosen career path). So English it was.
I contemplated journalism and teaching at various times, but kept circling back around to the allure of the book itself. The cover. The pages. The binding. I love it all. In a world with an eye cast forward towards e-books, this makes me doubly crazy. It is a passion that won't die. And I don't intend to fight it, I will just embrace it for as long as I can. Call me not just a bookworm, but an optimistic bookworm. I will always enjoy the heft of a new book in my hands, and this is why I want to be in publishing.
One of the things I can and have attached myself to in this so-called digital revolution affecting the publishing industry is the blogosphere. Or what some would dismiss as a vapid symposium of people with little to say but a platform from which to speak anyway, full of shallow analysis marked by cynicism and casual dismissal to rule the day. But it's been my finding that for as many mediocre bloggers there is someone thoughtful, honest, provoking or just damn interesting blogging about the same topic. Voices that we wouldn't get the opportunity to hear otherwise, and a community to plug into; a community that would not be replacing something that already exists but generating new contacts. The magic words are "You're reading that? I am too." and often that's all you need.
I've decided to 'plug in' and launch a book blog of my own. Whether or not it will be a success under any definition remains to be seen, but I'd like to try and put my own bookminded waves out there.
First and foremost, this blog is to chronicle a voracious appetite for reading. All the books I love and the books I don't and why will be written about here in excessive detail. As I work to attain a Master's in Publishing, other publishing topics might crop up too, especially concerning book design. I'm also a writer trying to crank out my first novel- I'd like to include relevant slices on the craft of writing. And because I believe in media cross-contamination, film/television/music references in my favorite literature and my favorite of other media's literary references should crop up too. It'll be a party.
I promise to be entertaining first of all. I don't think I'd like to type just to see myself type. (If I get too dull or distracted I'll pull out- that's the great/terrible thing about blogs, they can blow away easily like a tumbleweed when the blogger gets bored.) I promise to be honest. I promise to care for what I'm writing about. Always that.
Let's get you and I hooked up with some good reads. My view on what makes a book good is closely aligned with Hemingway's, so take note:
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."
Here's to being compelled by books long into the future.
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