Reading...

“What is reading, but silent conversation.” - Charles Lamb

I love conversation.  I love the exchange of ideas and the expansion of the mind.  I love discovering something new, or rediscovering something old.  I love to share dreams, and to feel. And I love to read.  Everything from cookbooks and cereal boxes to newspapers and old mysteries, if it is there to read, I will read it, even if I have read it a hundred times before.  Silent conversation.  Perhaps it is my temperament.  I am a phlegmatic-sanguine.  In otherwise, I love people, but I’m terribly shy.  Perhaps this is why I love to read so much.  Books allow the conversation, without the risk of rejection.  We still connect to people through books, only it is limited by a number of pages - and our imaginations.  Have you ever had conversations in your head with your favorite book characters?  Or arguments with those characters you despise?  Sometimes I have conversations with the authors themselves, imagining having tea with G.K. Chesterton.  Someday I hope we will share some excellent conversations in Heaven.  In the mean time, I pull a volume off my shelf, listen, and nod in agreement.  Sometimes I throw in a “yes, but,” and often he replies satisfactorily.  Or not.  And our silent conversation continues.  

Growing up, I think I had more friends in books than in real life.  Actually, that is probably still true. Nancy Drew’s adventures dried my tears when my older sister’s teasing got to be too much.  Or maybe Betsy, Tacy, and Tib helped me forget the tragic loss of a kitten.  Of course, not all of my book friends were the sort I was supposed to be talking to.  Some were too old, and my mother cautioned me against them.  I remember sneaking “Mandy” books off my sister’s shelf.  Mom thought she was too grown up for little nine year old me.  Looking back now I see she was right - too many boys and too much romance.  Just the thing a young girl loves.  I still enjoy an innocent romance...on the side.  But it was the adventurers that stuck with me.  The characters who learned things and got things done.   


Mysteries were my favorites.  I loved puzzling things out, and all the action.  Nancy Drew, of course, and The Dana Girls.  I didn’t discover Cherry Ames until later, but we are still fast friends after all these years.  Mandy I find insufferable now, but she’s one of the few.  Of course, I don't mean Julie Andrews Edwards' Mandy.  Where is that book?  How I'd love to read it again.  It's on a shelf or in a box somewhere, waiting.  Along with the All of a Kind family and the Melendys.  Those were the friends I spent my summers and afternoons with.  I still love mysteries, and adventures.  I’m learning, though, that life rarely wraps up as neatly as it does in a book.  That doesn't take away the lessons held within the pages, though.  Lessons like perseverance, loyalty, the value of hard work, and acceptance.  Did you ever notice how accepting people are in Avonlea?  Not that they liked everyone, but they realized that everyone has their limitations.  And the "types" of people...Miss Marple would have been right at home, I think. Do we really know people anymore?  Do we really accept them for who they are, weaknesses and all?  Sometimes I think we are too busy accepting their sins to accept the person.

I like books that make me think.  I dislike books that make me cry, except for “A Gown of Spanish Lace” by Jeanette Oake, which somehow gets away with it.  Probably because it was the first and only one of her books that did make me cry.  Where was I?  Oh yes, I like books that make me think.  They draw me into the conversation.  I dislike books that preach.  There is no conversation when someone is preaching at you.  It’s hard to find good books these days, it seems, that know how to make you think and that don’t preach.  Fiction, anyhow.  I want more good Catholic fiction.  Fiction like “The Masterful Monk” by Owen Francis Dudley, or “Conceived Without Sin” by Bud McFarlane Jr., or “The Endless Knot” by William Biersach. I want to read more books like that.  I want to write books like that.  I want more conversations like that.  Maybe especially with living, breathing, people, not just the pages of their books...So, who are your favorite authors and book characters?