THE PRINTED WORD
I love to read. In fact, I think the ability to read is the single biggest achievement for anyone. If you can read, you are never alone, you can turn a dull, winter afternoon into an adventure in the sun, a meeting with an exciting stranger or put yourself in the middle of a family drama. If danger and excitement are your thing, that is also available in many forms.
Reading can be an escape into different worlds, somewhere you can not afford to go and living in a style beyond your means. You could be transported to different continents and be exposed to dangers you could never imagine. Of course, these adventures usually end happily and only the bad guys get their punishment, you usually overcome the difficulties and live to fight another day.
To those hoping for romance, they suffer through disappointments and love triangles but always end up with the perfect guy. My thoughts on perfect guys are a bit jaded at the moment so I prefer to lose myself in mysteries. I also enjoy psychological thrillers but, because I live alone, I usually leave these for vacations, where |I am safely amongst other people and the bright sunshine seems to make the scary passages less of a threat. Somehow, the possibility of a psychopath hiding in the closet or a monster under the bed seems less believable in a Mexican resort.
For people who like to submerge themselves in books, reading is an enjoyment to be jealously guarded from interruption. Magazines, crosswords or other pastimes are great for short periods of entertainment and can be put down to interact with others, however, once I get involved in a “real” read, I want no interruption,
I remember the agony of sitting through English lessons at school when the teacher had each one of us read, aloud, passages from a book. Even the best reader speaks slowly when reading aloud and for the rest of the class, following the words is a nightmare. Does anyone actually follow along, reading word for word as the orator progresses? Once I started the book, I would read to myself and get involved in the story so, when it was my turn, I would be hopelessly lost and would get told off for not paying attention.
Surely, to anyone listening to a story, the narrative being read is just boring unless it is read well. Hearing a student feeling out the words, syllable by syllable is painful to the listener and must be agonizing to a poor reader. A couple of girls in our class went for developmental speaking classes and they had been taught to enunciate every letter. This may be the correct way to speak the Queen’s English but it is awful to listen to as it takes away all meaning from the story being told.
Give me a good family saga or a murder mystery, a cup of coffee and a comfy chair and I am off to a different world, I have been known to sit reading until the early hours as I could not bear to be parted from my book. When I am really enjoying a story I will look how much more there is still to read and enjoy the luxury of knowing that I still have lots of pages left to enjoy. Nothing annoys me more that finding the book finishes up rather quickly and the remaining pages are a couple of chapters from the author’s next book, put in there to whet your appetite for his next novel.
I feel that this is cheating as I expected to be entertained for another hour by the original book. I never read these pages as I am never sure how long it will take me to move on to the next book. However, I soon forgive the author or his publisher, they accomplished their aim and took me out of myself for a good few hours or even a couple of days, who could ask for more than that?