On Sundays, I drive back and forth between Aliso Viejo and San Juan Capistrano several times throughout the day for various church services. I’ve lately been trying to come up with a way to fill up the two-hour gap between the time that my sister has to be at church in the evenings and the time that I am supposed to show up. During the last couple of weeks, I’ve ended up at Barnes & Noble. B&N has proven to be the perfect place for a little midday reading, coffee-drinking, and people-watching and has also reminded me of my love for books.
My memories are often placed on a timeline made up of books. When I think about third grade, I remember reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins. When my fifth grade year comes into conversation, I remember being read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for the first time. Middle school becomes the years of Madeleine L’Engle’s entire collection and the year I was sixteen becomes my time of reflection on East of Eden and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (it took me a while to process those epic stories). And, in more recent years, I remember exactly where I was the first time I picked up The Golden Compass or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or The Hunger Games series.
I don’t know exactly what kind of person I would be without my deep, deep love for reading, but I almost certainly would be less curious, less open-minded, and less knowledgable about the world and all the different people who live in it.
