Reading

This is so right.

I will fully admit that I do not read enough.

This is such a change from when I was younger though - I had dozens and dozens of books and my family have always said how my nose was stuck in a book and how I used to read at the speed of light. However in this digital age, I have found myself more & more engrossed in social media, taking myself away from the books I used to love.

So, last Monday, on the Bank Holiday, I set myself up in the garden - I had a beer, I had the sun, I had Hugh Laurie's album on Spotify and I had the Great Gatsby - which I read in the entire afternoon. I've not done that in a while - immersed myself in a book so entirely that I've finished it in one sitting. But there was something compelling about the Great Gatsby - I adored the imagery, Fitzgerald's use of colours. I could picture everything. I believe that's the sign of a good book. When you're not just reading the words - you feel like you're there and you're watching it all happen. I was transported to West Egg. I could palpably feel Gatsby's pain - rejected by the woman he loves because he didn't have money. So he builds this life, has this mansion, throws big, bright, beautiful parties, full of nameless, faceless people & is just living on the hope that one day, Daisy may walk into one of his parties.

At the moment, I'm working on The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then it'll be Huckleberry Finn and then Catch-22. Possibly 1984 after that. The feeling a of a good book in your hands cannot be replaced.

"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."