Warning: Rambling Ahead (but there is a point!)

So I promised myself I wouldn't blog until there was something positive in my life for me to talk about. Well... there isn't really much. Nothing of note anyway. I mean I have electricity and a roof over my head but those who have those things aren't interested in hearing about that and those who don't wouldn't want to hear about it, so I can't talk about that.

Instead of continuing to complain like the whiny bitch I have apparently turned into lately, I decided I would go to my old stand-by -- books.

When I was a kid, I didn't have very many friends. Not because I wasn't a social child, but because I went to school in one city and lived in another, thereby making it pretty difficult to hang out at people's houses or go to parties or whatever. And where I lived, in a mobile home park, my neighbors were an old woman, an old man, a gay couple and a lesbian woman. Oh, and an old man who liked to wear women's panties but we didn't talk to him. All adults. And, let's face it, normal adults don't want to hang out with kids. Panty guy might have wanted to -- his penchant for wearing women's underwear was the smallest of his quirks -- but for all intents and purposes, I didn't have companions when I was growing up. None, that is, except my dog and my books.

I started reading at an early age; my mom doesn't remember how old I was, but she loves to tell the story of me hanging over her shoulder, reading her grown-up book out loud, speaking words I had never seen or heard in my life. And once I started reading, I never stopped. I always was advanced in the literature department, reading at a twelfth grade level by the end of elementary school. In kindergarten, when the teachers and volunteer parents would be reading to the students, I would be up there reading to my own group of kids right along with the adults.

Needless to say, reading offered an escape from boredom, loneliness, family troubles, money troubles, etc. when I was a child. One particular notable example comes in the form of seven little books that compose the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you've heard of it. I felt I could really relate to Harry -- we were both ten-going-on-eleven, both lonely, both not in the happiest of families (a bit of an understatement when referring to the Dursleys, but the comparison still stands), and so on. Left alone with my thoughts, I was able to escape into the magical world of Hogwarts. As Harry and the rest of the clan grew up, I grew up right along with them, year after year. When I graduated high school, Harry left Hogwarts and went on his final adventure. Even if I was just a mere Muggle, the Harry Potter characters and storyline were relatable, offering me a distraction from my daily life.

And it still does to this day, even though nowadays I'm more likely to reach for my phone to text my best friend when I need a restoration of sanity. I won't tell you how many times I've reread the series or the individual books (I'm rereading the seventh one right now), mostly because I have no idea myself. Probably somewhere in the hundreds. Yes, hundredS. But I hadn't revisited them in a long time. I had forgotten what it was like to read for pleasure, as I never get a chance during the semester due to the sheer amount of workload I have from all my classes. I can't keep up with my assigned reading, much less additional reading. Occasionally over the summer, I'd read a book or two, but I've literally read every single book in my house except maybe one or two which don't hold my attention (Bill Clinton's "My Life," I will conquer you someday) or which I'm not interested in, so when given the choice between INTERNET FOREVER! and reread Clan of the Cave Bear for the umpteenth time, I'd go for the internet.

Recently, though, I had the pleasure of being able to purchase four books (which I totally never should have bought and can't afford but oh well, I've already read three of them and most of the fourth so why return them now, right?) by Stephen King, who, by the way, is my favorite author ever. Now, King isn't the best writer in the whole world -- I doubt he's going to be winning any Pulitzer prizes or anything -- but he can weave together a story like very few can. He walks the line perfectly between the natural and the supernatural, grounding his stories in reality but allowing enough imagination to seep in that it almost seems plausible. I'm a skeptic by nature, so this balance is essential for me; for a novel to be implausible and grounded mostly in the supernatural, it has to be well-written. The Shack by William P. Young comes to mind. Wholly supernatural, horridly written. I hated it.

My love for Stephen King is evident in the number of books I own and have read of his. I own about sixteen books of his, which is more than twice the number of books that I own from any other author (well, technically I own fifteen, but my friend let me read one of his books and then called me a slut and stopped talking to me so I think that means it's mine now, right?), and I've read probably... well, less than that. Probably like fifteen, because I haven't read the two Dark Tower books I own yet but I read Carrie and I don't own that. But, again, that is way more books than any other author. OH and if you want to count short stories, then you subtract one book (because it is a short story collection) and add *counts* fourteen stories. So almost THIRTY THINGS! That is a lot of things. I've also seen four of his movies because usually his movies really suck, but The Shining, Misery (which I haven't read), The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption which is the greatest movie of all time but I totally haven't read the short story and it makes me a sad panda, those are all good movies.

Anyway, the point of this is, I have a huge stack of books in my to-read pile, ranging from re-reads to "I need to finish this damn book already" to books my best friend's mom gave me which I have no idea if I'll enjoy or not. And if there's one thing I get excited talking about, it's books. So to motivate myself to post, and to give myself something to look forward to, which I think I really need right now, I'm going to try, at least once a week, to write a book post. I have enough to keep me going for a while, and I can generally finish a book in a week at most. Even The Stand, once I finally got going with it, took me less than a week (it's about a 1200 page book). I polished off every single Harry Potter book in one day, and reread it a second time in about three. The only time I have difficulty finishing a book is if I'm busy, like during the semester, or if I hate it, like with Pride and Prejudice or something like that. So we'll see how well this works out. I'm hoping to get one done on Friday, and I think if I start rereading my book (One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of my favorites) tonight, I should be able to finish it by then even though it's complex and you have to pay attention. Or maybe I'll reread Pet Sematary because that book is astounding. Or maybe... actually this post is long enough so I'll just stop now.

/awkward