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On Being a Bookworm

Full disclosure here: When I was little, I was the girl who spent all day Saturday locked in her room reading. I actually got in trouble at school for reading when I was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher. I would smell books. New books. Old books. I'd open the volumes and inhale the scent like it was fresh pine. I would spend hours of the day roaming Barnes and Noble, picking books off the shelves and reading their covers, rifling through classics, reading beginning chapters to decide if I should buy the book or not.
Since I've become a mom, my reading time has been significantly cut down. To give you some perspective on how much time it takes to be a parent, I mowed down War and Peace while I was working full time and student teaching;but after my eldest was born, I was lucky to make it through a recipe without being interrupted.
It goes without saying (but apparently I'm going to say it anyway) that I miss reading immensely. So I've tried to pick it up again in the last few years. I made it through a few Neil Gaiman novels, slogged down the Song of Ice and Fire series (side note: If George R.R. Martin doesn't finish writing the next book in the series pretty soon, I'm going to send one of my fire breathing dragons, er, kids after him), and devoured a few other good reads along the way.
However, like any addiction, I may have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction now. You know how most people start a book, read the whole thing, and after it is finished start reading a new book? I am currently reading no less than 4 books . At once.
Book one- folksy, southern, old-fashioned yarn mystery The Painted House by John Grisham
Book two - autobiographical book club challenge book Seven by some girl with "hat" in her last name
Book three - Transforming the Difficult Child (not that I have difficult children or students.....)
Book four - Dante's Divine Comedy
What's sick about it is I have more that I am waiting to read until I am done with at least one of the above. One is a book on faith by Pope Francis that I started to read but haven't picked back up out of sheer force of will.

 It's official friends and virtual neighbors. I have lost my mind.
It is now 11:00 pm and I have four days of school left before summer. I'd like to say I'm going to bed, but I'll probably get lost in a book instead.

Bon nuit.

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