Read with Me

 I heard an interview today on NPR with a woman who was talking about reading books. She said she reads a book a month, and suggests to others the goal of reading at least ten pages a day. At the end of a year that would amount to a couple of books a year. It sounds like a good idea, so I added to my New Years’ resolutions to read ten pages a day. 

 I have been reading at least 2 pages of a spiritual book at nighttime reading and another 2 pages of another book as bathroom reading. I have another book that I won in a contest about yoga on my nightstand.  I will be reading at least 6 pages of that book every day. Of course, I do a lot of reading online every day, yet there is something unique about losing oneself between the pages of a well told story. Great literature transports us to other places and times.

 It takes me back to my childhood when my life revolved around books. I read a book a week from age 8 to 18 when I graduated from high school. I named my beloved cat after a character in James Michener’s Hawaii, Wu Chou Ki, King of the Continents. I was there in Hugo’s Les Misérables with the French republicans storming the French Palace in 1830, as they overthrew the monarchy of King Charles. In Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, I was in that barn with the poor migrant family, the Joads, who fled the dustbowl in depression era Oklahoma, when they found the boy who was starving, and Rose of Sharon fed him. That was a shocking yet illuminating   image for a naive 13-year-old girl. I was freezing with Lara as she shivered in the frigid Russian winter, saving the scarce firewood for when Zhivago came home. These books carried me off to other worlds and widened my horizons.

 Writers can be a beacon for society; good books can transport us out of our normal existences, can give us hope, and help us dream a better future for ourselves and for the world.

 Read with me. If you follow this blog, you can post a response to the blog. Please tell me what you are reading.  Happy reading!