For the Love of Books

My future looked bleak; I was questioning my love for reading. Since summer break started, if anyone asked what I was doing today, my answer would be reading. I've officially started working on my thesis and taking a theoretical discourse class on the post-colonial and subaltern studies which meant lots of reading, lots of required reading.  Most days it was fascinating, but after doing the reading I was supposed to, I had to go do something else. I quit reading for fun, feeling like if I was going to read than I should be reading something for my thesis. I'm still excited for my thesis, but today, I got a needed reminder of my love for reading.

Today I went to the Utah Festival of Books. In truth, there were more activities going on than there were books (I pretended to be a newscaster and had my name written in cool calligraphy), but the activities focused on learning and getting people to read. I deal with books so often that I forget some people don't read them. Dare I say it? I've been too immersed in academia lately. It was great to see discussions on cooking, writing, and gardening or see kids work on reading activities. I remember being so excited for book fairs as a kid. If I got good reports from teachers during parent-teacher conference, and I always got good reports, then I got to choose a book. I'm not sure if that was sneaky parenting or me being a book worm from a very young age, but I loved it. Perhaps nostalgia enticed to me buy books (as if I needed an excuse), but I got three books today that have nothing to do with my thesis:

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot- I foolishly sold back my Norton Anthology, plus there is something unschool-like in owning a thin book.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri- This might be a bit of a risk, but I read "Interpreter of Maladies" in high school and really enjoyed it.

The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson- I'm most excited about this book because I like going for walks and was thinking there had to be a book that analyzes walking. This is that book. Besides, it's been too long since I've read about something just because I was curious.

I'll let you know if I come to any profound conclusions from reading these books, but it's refreshing to add some books to my library that have nothing to do with my schoolwork. Don't worry. I'll still keep trucking through my thesis, but at least I have some reading to remind me why I'm working on a thesis in the first place.