I am a word-slut. I covet, covet with covety covetness words, books, leather (down boy!), libraries. I am actually so bad that I asked for a dictionary for my 21st birthday! Yes, I am not a well puppy most of the time and the rest of the time I'm just plain mental.
I am currently reading my 30th book of 2012. I know this for fact, I am keeping a list just to be sure. Now, you may ponder how I manage seeing as I am a professional mother as well as being chief bean-counter in our business. But...I have a secret. I speed read. It's fabulous. I can remember vividly our Std.6 English teacher herding us in to the library projection room and taking us thru entire passages of text at increasing speeds and teaching us to focus our minds on filtering out the gobble-die-gook and gleaning an overview of the story in very little time. This is an amazing party trick if you can master it. It blew the lid of my library subscription. Where I was allowed to loan 7 books for 2 weeks, I found myself chomping at the bit after only 5 days!
And I am not at all label conscious. I will read anything once. And I have run my retinas over some humdingers! There are only so many heaving bosoms and throbbing members a girl can stomach!
All this reading has also stood me in very good stead. Whilst I cannot brag of a university degree, I know pretty much a little something about everything. Sure I am not going to revolutionise cancer research but I've read enough about to know it's a tough nut to crack! I can hold my own in conversations about pretty my anything, shockingly except rugby, considering I grew up in the Free State (but it was Orange back then when colour mattered as much as it didn't). Yes, the Sharks are bitterly disappointed.
And joy of all joys I have now been blessed with an amazing young somebody who obviously reads as much as I do. Oh my word, it's like having conversations with myself, insert John Malkovich here. How awesome to drop the label of a really obscure work and her eyes light up and she says yes, she's read it too! My heart is happy.
That being said let me add some celebrity glitter and honorary mention. My darling heart friend, Greta. Who so casually handed me her copy of The World According To Garp 12yrs ago and started my love affair with John Irving, amongst. Together we read something stupid like 120 (?) books that year, just because we could! We would sit for hours reading the encyclopedia to see who know more than the other and it was always even Stevens!
So now the moon is tipping and my latest page-turner beckons.
Bon nuit bibliophiles
