Prologue

I have a book problem.  I don’t so much read books as devour them.  I relish an afternoon this used book shop:

(Photo from Abebooks.com)

Digging through these treasures:

(Photo from Green AR by the Day)

But I also have one little quirk.  Yup.  Just the one.  No others.  Why are you looking at me like that?  STOP STARING!  And pointing.  And laughing.  Fine.  One of my many, many quirks has to do with books.  I get very attached to books that I love and sometimes I find myself falling into the habit of jealously guarding my reading time and reserving it for books with which I’ve already made friends.  Old, dear friends.  They’re practically family.  They might even be who I leave my hypothetical future children to in my will.  I’m serious (except for the inanimate object as beneficiaries part).  I am deeply attached to some of my books.  I’m on my second set of the Anne Series (I wore out the first set). 

Incidentally, I was going to link that to a certain official website, but then I realized they are all proud of the 3rd movie they did a few years ago called Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story and decided that they do not deserve the added traffic.  Because the movie behind the DVD cover you see below?  Biggest travesty ever inflicted upon literature.  I’m not exaggerating.  I would kind of very much like to punch Kevin Sullivan right in the throat for that one.  And I’m not really a violent person.  OK, so maybe I wouldn’t punch him for real, but I dream of meeting him someday, looking him in the eye and saying to him “You, sir, should be very, VERY ashamed of yourself,” and walking away.  That would be delectable, but it wouldn’t wipe this piece of trash from existence:

Ugh….just looking at it makes me angry.

But I digress.  Someday I will definitely write a little something about how L.M. Montgomery and Anne Shirley changed my life.  That little something might take you a few days to read so you should probably bring a snack.  For today I’ll just leave it at “I take my books and the characters within their pages very much to heart.”  Hopefully that gives a pretty good idea of how I feel about my books.  And now we finally get to my little problem with them.

Sometimes I get all wound up with rereading my old favorites and stop reading anything new for weeks. Months.  Probably not years though.  I mean, come on, let’s be reasonable.  The problem with me rereading all my old favorites is that I have a bit of a penchant for series’.  Because I get so attached to the characters I don’t like to say goodbye to them after one book.  So I love me some series’.  The more books on the list the better.  The problem being that rereading each series at least once a year takes up a lot of time.  Even when I’m reading several books at once.  Right now I have one in the living room, two on my nightstand, one at my boyfriend’s house and one in my car.  Only two of those are new books.  So I have a new plan.  A plan that sort of scares me. 

I’m not going to read anything that I have already read for the next 6 months.

I started to make it a year but I almost had a panic attack just contemplating the very idea of not getting to read the Little House books in a nice hot bubble bath for a whole 365 days.  525,600 minutes! Oh dear, that gives me the vapors!  Maybe I’ll get brave later and make it a whole year but for now that’s a little too daunting. 

In order to make sure I stick to it I’ll keep track of my reading list here and post my reviews of all of the books I read.  So if you have any suggestions let me know!

FIRST I have to finish the book I’m re-reading for probably about the 11th or 12th time; The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon.  I LOVE this series.  It’s sort of historical fiction/sci-fi/romance.  Once that is placed lovingly back in it’s space on the bookshelf I will dig into Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.