Your entire being is charged. It tingles...on the top of your cheeks, at your fingertips and on the smooth skin at the arch of your feet. Striking phrases circle your brain, you feel the need to close your eyes and replay the images in your head of what you've seen, experienced.
It's all magnified a thousand times when the book is a memoir. When you turn the final page and see a face to connect to every experience you've just laughed, cried and lived through. I can't help but hold my breath while reading the author bio. Especially when it's a sad story, you can't help but smile and give a mental ovation when you see that the author is happily married, has kids, dogs and has obviously put his or her past behind them. They are not forgetting, and are always learning from it -- but they're better off now, and you cheer for them.
For years I've tried reading to induce sleep... to the worst avail possible. You see, the plan backfires on me here: If it's a good story, I just can't stop reading until it's finished. No matter how weary I am, how bloodshot my eyes are, or how early I have to get up in the morning, I'm doomed. I have to know. I can't let the characters, the author down by just casting them aside for hours or days until I return to them. Nope, not happening.
While I am currently blessed enough to be in the midst of three (now two) spectacular books, the particular masterpiece I've just finished was simply extraordinary. Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle" rocked my universe. If you ever think you've had a bad childhood, bad parents or been through a terrible situation, Walls will teach you a lesson in the most humble way possible. While the memoir covers things most people try to convince themselves just doesn't happen, Walls never complains or whines. She just tells her story... in the most captivating way imaginable. Please, read it. You won't regret it.
It was definitely good enough to inspire me back to blogging after a month of online abandonment. Email me, you can borrow it. This is a book I'm sad to have finished, because it's over. I want to meet the author, talk with her, write her a letter at least -- though I haven't the slightest clue what I'd say. Perhaps I would give her a high-five... that seems appropriate to me. :-) Though lots of inappropriate things do. I will go to bed now... probably. The other two books I'm reading are calling to me. Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and Douglas Adams' "Life, the Universe, and Everything" are the others. I realize this is a fairly diverse collection of reading material, but I don't mind, possibly even prefer reading lots of different things. But until we meet again, may you have sweet reads and sweet dreams.
