Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing.

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I’m not like Scout Finch.  It didn’t take a stern teacher forbidding me from reading to convince me that I loved to read.  I think that, on some level, I’ve always known I loved to read.  I love turning pages and getting lost in a story.  I love cheering for characters and even crying for them.  (Yes, fictional people, and no, I don’t think that’s weird.)  I’m not even going to get into why I love to read… I’m sure it goes much too far back into my childhood for me to even begin to mine the depths of where my love for books and words and stories comes from.

But lately I’ve been thinking about a related subject: why I read.  That is, why I take time out of my day, every day – and yes, I do read for pleasure every single day of my life – to absorb myself into a book.  There are so many reasons, and some of them contradict.  But they’re all true, maybe not all at the same times, but at some time or another.

~I read to escape.  Sometimes life gets overwhelming.  This past fall and winter were a very hard time for me, for reasons I won’t get into here.  And I can honestly say I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without books.  I sought out books that would transport me far, far away from the ugly stuff that was getting me down.  I read The Magicians and The Magician King, The Night Circus, and Wildwood – all fantastical, magical journeys.  I read Jane Austen and P.G. Wodehouse, two of my favorite English writers, each of whom can make me laugh and transport me to a gentler time and place.  I read The Sweet Life in Paris, walked the boulevards and tasted the croissants and hot chocolate with David Lebovitz.  These books all served a purpose – they took me away from the here and now.  I’ve always been someone who can sink into a book and completely tune out everything that is happening around me.  Sometimes I really need that escapism.

~I read to connect.  Kind of the opposite of escaping, right?  But I also read because I love to connect with others over a good book.  I can happily chat about books for hours with R or my mom, and since I discovered book blogs I’ve found a whole new level of connection that comes with being a reader.  I like to hear what others are reading, whether they liked a particular book, whether I might like it.  And I like to share my own opinions about what I’m reading.  There are times, sure, when I just want to check out of reality and books are wonderful for that.  But I always come back – eventually – and I want to talk about my adventures on the page.  So I read for that connection to others.

~I read for the words.  Sometimes I’ll be making my merry way through a book and just get blindsided by a completely gorgeous phrase or passage.  Like, for instance, the comparison of The Painted Veil‘s Mother Superior to a land of “tawny heights and windswept spaces” that just knocked me sideways.  I’ll read book after book in search of phrases like that.  Once you have one hit of prose that’s like poetry, you’ll always be looking for more.

~I read for the characters.  Specifically, for the ones who become my friends.  Like Anne Shirley and Emily Byrd Starr, Mary Lennox, Harry Potter, Lizzy Bennet, Bertie Wooster, Vicky Austin, Cassandra Mortmain, Flora Poste… I read to meet these friends and then I re-read to visit them again.  If I ever stopped reading, I would miss them.  (Again, yes, fictional people, and again, no, I don’t think that’s weird.)

~I read because I can’t not.  I guess in that way, I am like Scout Finch.  I’ve had times in my life when I’ve been too busy to read for fun – during finals season in college and law school come to mind, and Bar summer too.  And I invariably get itchy to pick up a book again as soon as possible.  If I don’t read every day, I get cranky.  If I go too long without reading, I go bananas.  Books are as necessary to me as food and water.  I have to turn pages if I want to survive.

Why do you read?

…Just a little bit.  Sometimes I don’t know when to stop.  It’s a particular character flaw of mine: I get carried away in libraries.  I don’t think there’s a cure.  It happens in tea shops too, but usually not to this extent.  (That involves spending money, which tempers me a little bit.  Darn free public library.)  The seeds for this particular binge were sown a few weeks ago.  I had two books on the Holds shelf at the library, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time.  On the one hand, I’m excited to read the books I get from the Holds shelf.  That’s why I put them on hold.  But I can’t just go in there and get a couple of books and then leave.  I have to make a loop through the stacks.  So I did.  Mistake 1.  Then, while I was wandering the stacks, I whipped out my Blackberry and checked my Goodreads app to see if there was anything calling my name from my to-read list.  Why yes, there was.  Mistake 2.  45 minutes later, I was struggling through the back door of the house, juggling a stack of five books – including two chunksters – while hubby stared at me in abject horror.

“What…” he gaped, “did you DO?”  He gently took the books out of my arms, steered me to the couch, and sat me down.  “I’m going to make you some tea,” he said.  “You’ve got a lot of reading to do.  Which book do you want first?”

Love that guy.

But that was weeks ago.  Why am I telling you this?  Well, I really thought I had hit rock bottom with this little book-borrowing problem of mine.  I knew I wouldn’t finish all of the books before I had to return them.  I had to prioritize – read the new releases first and make my peace with the fact that I would have to… gasp… renew a book.  And I did.  East of Eden has been sitting on my kitchen counter for three weeks now.

Fast-forward to this weekend.  Saturday, January 7, 2012.  The books were due back, and I had more books waiting on the holds shelf – five more, to be exact.  And even though I knew I should return East of Eden, I renewed it online, then loaded the rest of the books into my Strand bookbag and headed for the  mothership  library.

I won’t take anything out except what’s on the Holds shelf, I promised myself.  Counting East of Eden, that’s still six books.  That’s a lot.  So just the books on hold.  But it can’t hurt to take a little spin through the mystery section.  I just want to see if Maisie Dobbs is there.  For another time.  Another, less busy time when I don’t have books on the Holds shelf.  Really.

Do I need to tell you that Maisie Dobbs came home with me too?  Plus everything I had on hold?  I didn’t need to tell you that.  I know I didn’t.

Now every time I walk through my kitchen, there they are – staring at me.  Read me, they beg.  You addict, you.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie
Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear
The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown
The Coffins of Little Hope, by Timothy Schaffert
We, the Drowned, by Carston Jensen
The Dean’s December, by Saul Bellow
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

Due back January 28, 2012.  Game ON.

I’m a reader, and a traveler – of both the “armchair” and reality persuasions.  The turning of pages transports me to other places and times and introduces me to new people who, sometimes, become almost as real as the people I meet in my day-to-day life.  Reading has also enhanced my travel experiences tremendously; for instance, I told you about books I’ve loved that are set in the regions I visited on my recent road trip around southern England.

But it was on that road trip that I made an important discovery: it works both ways.  Reading enhances travel, of course, but travel can also enhance reading.

Obvious?  Probably.  It wasn’t the first time I’ve tried to match my book choices to my travel – I carried A Year In Provence and The Phantom of the Opera to France with me last year.  But for some reason, it was in Bath that I really understood that walking in characters’ literal footsteps can enrich a reading experience as much as it enriches a travel experience.

It was the first morning of the trip.  Hubby and I were still in a bit of a jet-lagged haze, but we trooped on out of our B&B, determined to experience the best that Bath has to offer.  We started with the wonderful – and FREE! – walking tour that Bath residents put on several times each day.  As we hiked all over Bath, our guide regaled us with stories from the city’s history.  We walked in the footsteps of Romans, early Christians, queens who have visited for the curative waters and celebrities who have made their homes in Bath’s exclusive Georgian buildings.

It was on a serene gravel walk behind one row of those exclusive buildings that I got the first hit of a reader’s revelation.  Our guide mentioned that Jane Austen had set two books in Bath – Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.  I’ve read Northanger Abbey many times but had never picked up Persuasion until I started it on the plane ride to London – choosing it precisely because it was set in Bath.  Our guide explained that the two main characters’ “heart to heart” (you know, that quintessential Jane Austen conversation where the characters confess their love for one another) happened on the very gravel walk on which we were standing.

As it happened, I didn’t get to that scene in the book until several days after we had already left Bath.  But when I did, when “dear Aunt Jane” sent her characters down the gravel walk and let them pour out their hearts to one another, I felt a special thrill from having JUST been there.  And even more than that, I could picture the spot exactly in my mind.  I set the characters down in the place where I had stood and imagined them into a setting I knew from having just seen it with my own eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the imaginative part of reading.  I like conjuring up the characters and their settings in my mind.  And with a good descriptive writer like Jane Austen, you don’t really need a personal experience to bring her books to life.  But it certainly did help.

I love libraries.  Having access to a good library is a huge quality-of-life thing for me.  Let’s face it, without the library I’d probably be flat broke and chewing on book pages instead of organic vegetables.  I grew up going regularly to my town’s library, which was satisfyingly stocked with Agatha Christie mysteries and Pearl S. Buck novels.  (Note to self: re-read The Good Earth, preferably soon.)  And I think I might have been the only kid to actually borrow from my junior high and high school libraries.  I was weird that way.  College and law school were an embarrassment of riches on the school library front, and when I got married and moved out to Arlington, Virginia, I had the pleasure of belonging to a really world class public library.  In fact, when hubby and I left Arlington to move into our forever house, one of the few things I was sad about was leaving the Arlington library.  But I’ve found a new home in Sherwood Regional Library, one of the outer branches of the Fairfax County library system… a small branch, yes, but with a great collection and the ability to get me pretty much any book I might want from another Fairfax County library if it’s not at my home branch (which has only happened once – I can almost always find whatever book I want right in the stacks).  I find I have grown to feel really at home at Sherwood – it’s cozy, and they keep me in books.  What more could a girl want?  And since I’m there on pretty much a weekly basis, I’m shocked I haven’t shown you guys around yet.  Let’s have a look, shall we?

This sign stands right outside the main doors to welcome you.  It makes me grin every time I see it, because I am truly proud and happy to call Fairfax County my home.  I love the beautiful natural surroundings, the friendly people, and all the great community resources – and it’s getting better all the time.  I particularly love Fairfax County because hubby and I chose to make our home here.  I love being an adult and being able to live wherever I want, and this is definitely where I want to live.  But I digress.  Let’s go inside…

First view upon walking in the doors – the information desk and a central well with desks and computers, and the shelves extending out in a U shape.  (Sorry for the not-great picture quality.  I had my camera on the wrong setting and didn’t realize it at first.  I figured I’d already made myself obtrusive enough with my gigantic dSLR so I didn’t want to re-shoot.)

Is there anything better than the sight of full bookshelves?  Especially when they’re library bookshelves?  Hello, library books.  I’m Jaclyn.  You probably know me as That Girl Who Hangs Out Here Every Saturday.  Don’t worry, I’ll take you all home in turn.  All in good time, my wordy little friends.

I can usually be found here, in the fiction section (or a few shelves over, in the mystery section, rifling through the Alexander McCall books).

And I almost always stop off here, too – at the Holds shelf.  This is where all those shiny, sought-after new releases wait for the lucky, patient people who have been inching their way up the waiting lists.  I’m on the waiting list for at least seven books at all times, so I almost always have something fun on this shelf.  For example, after I snapped this picture I went ahead and snatched up the copy of The Magician King that was waiting for me.  Oh happy day!

Goodbye, lovely lovely Sherwood Libe.  See you next weekend.

I’m almost ashamed to tell you guys this, but if I can’t come clean to my three blog readers, then to whom can I come clean?  (Grammar.  Embrace it.  Fear it.)

I’ve been a bad reader.  I’ve been flighty and flaky.  I’ve become… a bookslut.  (Ahem, Mom, that just means I have lots of books on the go, not that I’ve been reading D.H. Lawrence or flirting with male librarians.  I swear I haven’t flirted with a librarian since college.)  After an incredibly focused month of book monogamy in October, I currently have FOUR… count ’em, 1, 2, 3, FOUR… books on the go.  And I’m beginning to despair of ever finishing any of them.

Here’s what I’m reading now…

As Always, Julia – Loving this collection of letters between Julia Child and Avis DeVoto.  I started it before England and have been enjoying every minute.  If only I could stop getting distracted by new shiny books.

Night and Day, by Virginia Woolf – Started in London, still plodding along.  Would really love it if I didn’t keep wandering away.

The Lantern, by Deborah Lawrenson – Waited several months for my turn to take this new release out of the library.  It’s one of the new shiny books that’s distracted me from the above.  Bad Jac.  Like I said, flakey.

The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton – Chalk this one up to my apparent A.D.D.  I was reading Night and Day in London and thought, “When I get back to the Colonies and finish this up, I think I’ll be in the mood for some Edith Wharton.”  (Yes, I really think these thoughts.  Yes, I am super cool and have tons of friends.  Thank you for asking.)  So I got back to the Colonies all right, but I couldn’t wait until I finished Night and Day to dive into The Age of Innocence.  I was just too excited.  This despite the fact that I’ve had The Age of Innocence on my bookshelf for, literally, YEARS, and never even blinked at it before.  I guess I needed to be deep into a book about London in order to care about Old New York.  This is the twisted way my mind works, people.

What to do, what to do?  I know one thing’s for sure: I cannot, repeat, cannot, start any new books or I might not actually finish anything this month.  Hold me to this, people.  No.  New.  Books.  Until I finish all four of these.  Or until my other current library book (The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair) is due back.  I got that one off the waiting list too and can’t return it.  I like to live on the edge.  But seriously, guys, I need you to hold me accountable.  If you see me with a book in my hand, and it’s NOT one of the above, please take it gently out of my hands and then punch me in the face.  Thanks.  I’m counting on you.

I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember.  I mean that literally.  I cannot recall a time when books were not a huge part of my life.  On the first day of kindergarten, I remember sitting at my table and wondering when we were going to learn to read.  Now, I already knew how to read – my mom taught me when I was in preschool – so I’m not sure what I expected.  To be inducted into some sort of secret society, perhaps.  A secret society of readers.  Or maybe some kind of turning point where I officially became a book person.  Which I already was, and had been practically since birth.

There was never a time in my reading life where I had to learn to love reading and books.  That came naturally to me.  Turning pages, scanning printed words, imprinting stories upon my memory and imagination – those things took no effort.  So most of my reading life has been spent honing my tastes… figuring out what I like, and what I don’t like… in short, forming an identity as a reader.  For me, just identifying as a reader doesn’t go quite far enough.  Of course I’m a reader.  The question is, what kind of reader?  That is something I’ve been figuring out all my life.

In elementary school and middle school, I read wide varieties of “young adult” fiction, although I’m not sure that’s what anyone called it.  I read good stuff and junky stuff indiscriminately.  I was just as likely to be glued to a book from the Sweet Valley series, or especially The Baby-Sitters Club, as I was to a copy of Anne of Green Gables or From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  I think the turning point for me, the point at which I started to think about content and get picky, came the summer after eighth grade.  I don’t remember now what I did (probably mouth off), but my parents were punishing me for something.  I was a weird kid, and normal punishments like taking away television or phone privileges had next to no effect on me – I barely watched television anyway and I’ve never been a phone person.  So I suppose my parents had to get pretty creative when it came to discipline, and the punishment they dreamed up on this particular occasion was this: no books, except for “classics.”  Functionally, that meant no Baby-Sitters Club.  Oh, the humanity.

It was a week of enforced good taste.  Not reading was obviously not an option.  So I picked up a book that no one could argue with or take away: To Kill a Mockingbird.  I still remember sitting on the couch with my book and my parents occasionally coming into the room to ask me, accusingly, what I was reading.  My response, emphatic and defensive, was always: “To Kill a Mockingbird!  It’s a CLASSIC!”  Take that, parents.  As it turned out, when the summer ended and I started ninth grade Honors English, I was glad to have already read To Kill a Mockingbird.  By then, it had become one of my favorite books – I’d already read it twice by the time it was assigned in the spring semester – and I was able to delve more deeply into the characters and the story.  For a class project, I wrote a journal from the perspective of Atticus Finch and my very demanding, altogether wonderful teacher was thrilled with it.  She said I became Atticus.  Looking back, I owe quite the debt of gratitude to To Kill a Mockingbird.  Not only was it the catalyst for a change in my reading life, but Atticus Finch is one of the reasons I became a lawyer.

Ninth grade changed my reading life beyond To Kill a Mockingbird.  I read Jane Austen for the first time – Sense and Sensibility was my introduction into Regency England; I identified with serious, pragmatic Elinor and rolled my eyes at dreamy Marianne.  My English teacher – the same one who assigned To Kill a Mockingbird – encouraged me to read Eudora Welty.  I read my first Shakespeare play.  By the end of the year, I was a full-on book snob.  By the end of high school, all of my Baby-Sitters Club books were in the basement, replaced on my shelves by meticulously organized, scrupulously chosen classics.  For years, my criteria for any book I read was that I had to be proud to tell my ninth grade English teacher that I was reading it.  If it wasn’t a book I would want to show to her, I wouldn’t touch it.  In 1997, I set a goal to read 50 books, all books that I hadn’t read before, that were not assigned for school, and that I would be proud to show that particular teacher.  I met that goal, but I was reading up until about 9:00 p.m. on December 31st to make it – and book 50 was actually an epic poem, which I wasn’t sure should really count, but desperate times and all that.  In 2007 I set the same goal, only this time I had to read 100 books, all books I hadn’t read before.  But the other criteria was the same – I had to be proud of each and every book if I happened to see my English teacher.

I never stopped “reading for fun,” even when life got very busy.  My college major, Industrial and Labor Relations, was notoriously heavy on reading assignments.  It was a campus joke to refer to ILR as “I Love Reading” – in fact, I remember my grandparents dropping me off for accepted students’ weekend in March of my senior year in high school.  We bumped into some upperclassmen, who asked what school I would be in.  I told them ILR and they laughed, “Oh, I Love Reading!”  My grandparents – coming to my defense – said seriously, “She really does love reading.”  The campus joke was right on; ILR kept me busy with reading assignments.  I probably had quadruple the books on my windowsill – maybe even more – in comparison to my roommate, a nutrition major.  Still, I still found time to squeeze non-labor books in (just not too many; I did have a G.P.A. to think about in light of my looming law school applications).  If I ever fell off the book bandwagon, it was in law school, especially second and third year when every moment of every day was accounted for.  But I always caught up during the summers.  And then came my first job – a government job, with enforced maximum hours and a handful of new friends who happened to be as book-obsessed as I was.  My reading life exploded into activity (hence the 100-books-in-2007 challenge).  And I haven’t slowed down since.  Sometimes I’m asked how I can read and write all day – which, indeed, I do: cases and contracts and briefs, oh my! – and then go home to curl up with a book all evening.  I can’t really explain it, except to say that I have yet to bump up against my limit when it comes to words I can stand to read or pages I can stand to turn.  And legal writing is very different from the fiction I favor in my off hours.  I don’t feel overloaded at all.

I’ve been a reader for more than two decades now.  (I don’t know how long, precisely, because as I said I don’t remember not being able to read.)  In that time, I’ve read good books and bad books, and a very few books that I had to stop midway through because they were just awful.  I’ve discovered what I don’t like: science fiction, most fantasy (except for my beloved Harry Potter), most dystopia, and most “young adult” fiction.  And I’ve honed a description of what I do especially like: classics (especially English literature), new literary fiction, well-researched historical fiction with strong characters, travel memoirs, and British mysteries.  More than just knowing my likes and dislikes – which was a long process – I feel that I have finally assembled my identity as a reader: I am mainly a fiction reader with a preference for both historical classics and new literary fiction with well-drawn characters, but I will read non-fiction books that evoke a sense of place or personality.  I favor simple but evocative language and tight plots.  I’ll give most books a chance, especially in my preferred genres, but in order to earn a spot on my permanent shelf a book has to engage me from the beginning, give me relatable characters and a well-drawn plot, and reward me with a satisfying ending.  My preferences may change over time – in fact, I’m sure they will – but I’m sure I’ll always have strong opinions about books.

What about you – what kind of reader are you?