Reading has always fascinated me. When I was little, my parents used to have to take my books away so I would actually socialize with other children. If left to myself I would read every spare minute, anything I could get my hands on. I blew my allowance on books. I memorized my 14 digit library card pin before my home phone number.
I can re-read a good book a hundred times and still get something new out of it. My copies of Gail Carson Levine, Tamora Pierce, and Diana Wynn Jones have all been taped together from so many revisitings since childhood. Even my more recent favourites are obviously well loved.
And there's still something almost magical about opening a crisp new book and looking at the words typed on the page, knowing that they came from someone else's imagination, that they are code and I have to go about picking them apart to get to the heart of things. It's like the author takes me by the hand and says 'Hey, look here. I've made something wonderful and I want to share it.'. Whole cities, whole universes, just on paper and in your head. Even after five or ten years, the magic of that first reading lingers there, and that, maybe, is why I find it impossible to say goodbye.
See, finishing books makes me a little glum. But in a contented way, if that makes sense at all.
It also, clearly, makes me especially garrulous. :)
