the reader

Before I was anything else, I was a reader. During my childhood Saturday mornings would find me, then toward ten o'clock, still in bed and reading. Always pale and absorbed, I read in a grim kind of way, with a cup of chocolate grown cold beside me. Despite cries of "get up sleepyhead" coming from down the hall, I would read on, mechanically twining my long braided hair around my wrist and sometimes looking at my sister or brother with the unseeing glance of the obsessed.

Now as an adult I still read in a grim kind of way. I have responded to my own child's cries of "look at the rocket, mama!" with that unseeing glance, that ageless glance of the obsessed, full of obscure defiance and an incomprehensible irony. Like any other reader, I am susceptible to romantic insomnia. This past week I induced it in myself with the following: The Thirteenth Tale (this started the madness), Jane Eyre, Le Grand Meaulnes (this fed it) and Tom's Midnight Garden (for the child). I tried sprinkling Bright Star into the mix but I am a reader, not a film girl. I am exhausted...

Anyway, I recommend all of the books listed above if you find yourself with a hankering for secret gardens, troubled families, confused identities, crumbling mansions, and tragedy. My only warning is that you may find yourself drinking lots of hot cocoa as you go.