Becoming A Bookworm, Again.

When I was a girl I loved reading. I was a dedicated bookworm. My parents, especially my mother, always encouraged reading and writing and they valued education. They always bought books for us to read, they were readers themselves and my mother always took us to the library and to other programs where we could get free books.

I loved libraries as a kid. When I was a teenager, I would skip class or even skip school and just hang out at my city’s central library! (Yes, I was the geekiest goody-two shoes geek that ever geeked. Don’t laugh!)

With the advent of the web, I slowly stopped reading regularly until it occurred to me one day last year that I barely read anything at all these days. And how can you continue to write quality stories if you never read? I decided it was time to fix that. On top of that, I could feel myself getting dumber! When I look at old school papers that I’d written (by hand) and even short stories that I’d written as a teenager, I could barely recognize myself. I sounded like a highly intelligent person. My vocabulary was bigger back then. This was embarrassing. My younger self seemed smarter and more educated than my older self. I thought: “Well, that won’t do!” I also decided that I wanted to get back into reading for pleasure because it’s fun!

What’s heartening to me is seeing so many young people who are into reading. There is a saying that young people don’t read these days and while that is true for many, it’s not true about all of them. BookTok is a prime example and so is BookTube. Plenty of young people are reading and they love books. I love that.

I went to my favorite bookstore (Powell’s) to remedy the problem and picked up a nice little TBR list of books that I’ve had my eye on. My thoughts on each book will come in the future. The list is as follows:

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Finished. As always I love her work. I loved this book! It stayed with me long after I’d finished reading it. I didn’t want it to end!)

The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (TBR. I always find Freud and Jung’s works important for storytelling or just for self-knowledge.)

The Discourses by Epictetus (Still reading. Very useful for daily living and emotional balance. I see it like a secular stoic version of Proverbs.)

Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey (Still reading. I enjoyed her Kushiel series and this book, so far, is good.)

Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher (Still reading. So far, this is just as exciting as his father’s Dresden Files series.)

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (TBR. He is one of my favorite authors due to the Barsoom series. Decided to give this series a try. I tried when I was a teenager and couldn’t get into them. Will try again.)

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (TBR. I’ve heard a lot about this Murderbot series. I’m excited!)

The Witches, Salem 1632, A History by Stacy Schiff (TBR. This was a completely random pick-up through browsing. That’s another thing I miss about buying books these days but that’s a post for another day. It looks interesting and I love history.)

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (TBR. I love dragons and this looks interesting.)

So that’s the list so far. I’m a slow reader but I will post my thoughts on these books later this year. I don’t do negativity so if I don’t like a book I won’t post anything about it but I’m quite sure that I’m going to enjoy all of these books. Anyway, back to writing for me! Happy writing!