All My Senses Have Been Awakened

I have totally gotten back into my reading groove, and I am thrilled. I am currently re-reading THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy, as well as my first Chuck Klosterman book (which is hilarious and witty and sarcastic and I think we should be best friends). I feel like I kind of flew through THG to get to MOCKINGJAY (since I inexplicably bought it the day it came out although I was finishing THG and hadn't even touched CATCHING FIRE yet, but I work in mysterious and kooky ways), so I'm reading it for the nuances now. I figure I will be done with CF this weekend, and should be done with MJ before the new Harry Potter movie next week (another huge SQUEE! even if I am preparing to cry by the bucketloads). I wanted to reread DEATHLY HALLOWS (again), but it hasn't been too long since I read it for the second time so it is still quite fresh in my mind. I do totally hope they do a marathon (if even just DH1) when DH2 premieres, since they so obviously go together.

Anywho, I am happy to be over my reading slump. It wasn't so much that I wasn't reading, although sometimes it would take me longer to get through a book than it normally would have (and there is no excuse these past few months that I've been unemployed, except that the internet is addictive), but that I wasn't getting INTO the books the same way I used to. Oddly enough, that is what really drove my switch into reading more YA books, especially those in a series or by the same author (feel comfy in that same style sort of deal). People may knock them (unfairly, I may add), but YA series like THG and HARRY POTTER are the BEST at creating completely alternate worlds that are flabbergastingly awesome yet so easily relateable. I wish I could begin to create a world even a quarter as amazing, but it takes a lot of my brain energy to just figure out these worlds.

But reading THG is what really took me back to the reason I love reading- not just the escapism, but the REALISM. Everything feels so nice in books because what you are reading on the page isn't YOUR life, but the feelings are so true and raw that they ARE yours. You take a moment to feel the character's pain or sadness or anger or love, and the only way you are able to feel them is because you have some sort of time where you experienced them. You grow along with the character throughout the story, and at the end, when you can say "Wow, that is still so typically [character] but so much more mature, controlled, etc," you can say a lot of that for yourself.

It's not the fact that truly horrific and altogether ridiculous things happen to the characters that could never happen to you. Or even you realizing that nothing can be so bad as "truly horrific and altogether ridiculous novel event," or that if the character got through that, you could get through your problems. It just renews you. While you may be completely exhausted (mentally and emotionally), you have this new bit of knowledge. This new piece of creativity. A different view of the world. And putting them all together oftentimes creates change.

We are often told that, when a situation becomes too much to bear (or you can no longer think or feel something), to take a quiet moment to relax. Grab hold of your bearings. And then just let it all out and open up those floodgates. Feel EVERYTHING. Think EVERTHING. From the very best to the very worst. And once it is all out, your mind is usually able to find the most rational and logical outcome.

And if we were able to garner a bit of the courage and strength that takes from a fictional world, then more power (and reading!) to you.

*Post title from Danger Radio's "Broken Man" (Who, by the way, are very cool dudes)


~~~Oh, I forgot before, but on my (very) short Christmas list this year, besides a new digital camera to replace my old one that died a slow and sticky death this summer, is an eReader! Most likely a those little Sony ones because they look good, are cheap, and my older sister works for Sony so she can probably manage to get an even better deal. If I do manage a nice haul of money this year, I will probably try saving up for one, and maybe I may even manage to FINALLY get unemployment once the new year starts