I have always been a reader, and I’m fairly nondiscriminatory when it comes to what I read (though as a young girl, I mostly refused to read anything unless it was about a girl of the same age as myself–thankfully I grew out of that). If it’s good, if it captures my attention, I’ll read it till the end. If it’s boring, poorly written, or if I’m simply not in the mood for it, I won’t hesitate before casting it aside. This has made the completion of “big books” a difficulty for me.

I’ve never been a reader of the classics. I trudged through Jane Austen in college for a class, and while I want to say “Oh gosh, she’s just the best,” it’s just not in me to lie to you guys about it. In that same vein, books that come in at more than 500 pages are just plain intimidating. If you’re a reader, I know you have a TBR (To Be Read) stack that’s probably a mile long. Mine is no exception–in fact, working at the library makes me feel like the whole damn building is my TBR pile. There are SO many books out there you guys, thousands that I want to read and haven’t had a chance to, and every week new books are coming out that get added to that list.  Big Books, Classic Books–they take time, a luxury I do not currently have.

So. While I remain happily reading from a variety of genres, I have to admit that the bigger the book is, the less likely I am to pick it up. 1- I have doubts about it being able to keep my attention for all of its pages and 2- In the time it will take me to read one 800 page book, I could read THREE other normal sized books.  And, as an obsessive GoodReads Book Challenge participant, it’s about the numbers.

And now, as I write this all down, I realize just how absurd that sounds. Who cares how many books I read in a year? Who cares if I’m not a speed reader or if I’m into the classics?  All that matters is that I love reading words on pages that tell stories to entertain, enlighten, and educate me about the world around me (whether they are fantastical or true).

So what inspired this post is the fact that I am currently reading a Big Book.  Recommended to me by one of our library clerks, I picked up “Natchez Burning” by Greg Iles. I’ve never read his books (apparently there are quite a few)–I hadn’t even heard of him before. But the clerk was raving about how incredible the writing was–and so I grabbed it off the shelf.

Weighing in at almost 800 pages, I had some severe doubts. Even after I made it 60 pages in, I wondered how I would fare. As someone who bores easily, knowing I still had 720 pages to go was a little too daunting. But, as I write this, I’m currently bookmarked at 410 pages, and the book is all I think about. It’s that good. I’m trying to suppress the anxiety at having been reading the same book for well over a week, and that I will continue to be reading the same book for the next week or two as well.  And I’m trying to force myself to get work done instead of hiding under my desk with the gargantuan novel open in my lap. I even walked with it the other day (giving myself quite the arm workout as I traveled the road for 2.5 miles).

And so I am trying to convert. I’m going to try to be less obsessed with my GoodReads Book count (because really, who am I competing with? Myself? I know that it’s Monica’s favorite kind of competition–apologies for those who don’t get the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. reference–but for me, I need to go back to remembering that reading is a joy, not a race). I’m not going to let Big Books scare me. Hell, maybe I’ll even give Anna Karenina another shot–I made it 200 pages in and got frustrated, but perhaps this summer will be my Summer of Big Books. I’ll keep you apprised of my progress. Maybe if I slip in a short, sweet YA novel between the big ones, it’ll help keep me focused.

What about you, Dear Readers? Do you like Big Books and you cannot lie? Or are you intimidated by page counts? Do you have a favorite Big Book I should add to that ever growing TBR of mine? Let me know!

Once upon a time there was a little girl with lots of homes. The little girl and her mother moved around from cottages to lake houses to farm houses and back, lugging a piano and bookshelves to each and every one. Each home was loved and part of the family, but there was one in particular, a home they didn’t actually live in: that was where the little girl truly grew up.

A small engine repair shop is maybe not an ideal playground for a five year old, and yet–the little girl, and her family, made it work.

They built her a tree house in the lilac bush near the parking lot. When the little girl was busy being Harriet in a raincoat and dark glasses, she crouched behind lilacs and wrote down license plate numbers. These lists were then carefully stored in a filing cabinet in the office, appropriately and subtly labeled “Spy File”.

When she needed a place to read, they let her sit at the counter, The Hobbit propped up in front of her face.  They didn’t make her move or speak to customers, they worked around her and made excuses for her when her eyes refused to look up from the pages, even when someone (rudely) flicked her book to get her attention. “She’s a reader,” they said. “There’s no distracting her!” they assured.  “She’s gets it from her English teacher grandmother,” they explained fondly.

When she wrote stories and poems, they listened patiently, nodding along and assuring her they were good (they were not).  They supplied her with paper and pencils and clipboards to take outside and keep on writing. They explained words she didn’t know and helped her come up with names of countries and cities she’d never heard of before. They gave her maps to color and relabel, they let her put on puppet shows and perform dance routines–and they applauded when she was done.

All summer, every summer, the little girl found ways to play among the boats and tractors and ATVs. The pole barn, used for boat storage in the winter, sat mostly empty all summer long. So the little girl made the dirt floored metal barn another playroom, constructing time machines out of sawhorses and conjuring monsters out of dark corners. She picked blackberries from behind the barn, eating more than went into her bucket that she’d bring back to her family. She dug clay out of the pond and created small pots that would dry in the sun and be stained later with blackberry juices and seeds.

She traveled through the hay field and jumped in the creek. She ran in the sun and lay in the shade of the trees, often accompanied by a dog or a cat. She rescued stray creatures and brought them home and was allowed to keep almost all of them. She helped haul cardboard for the bonfire pit and collected lunch orders on Saturdays. She rode along on service calls and held small yard sales by the front door.

Her hand prints sit at two different sizes, two different years, in the cement outside the garage. Her pictures are under the glass on the counter–newspaper articles and old family photos of her riding on snowmobiles and lawnmowers. Her handwriting endures on files she labeled, and the Spy File is probably still safely tucked away in there.

It isn’t a home of hers anymore. She has grown up and moved on, and her family has, too. She has loved all her homes, all the settings that featured her story growing up, but it is this particular home that endures in her memory as the place she grew the most. And it was her family, ever encouraging and urging her forward, that truly made it special.