Reading week: a break for sanity's sake and updates

Reading week has finally arrived and it could not have come at a more perfect time.
School work is piling up-I'm way behind on creative writing, falling behind on Science Concepts, Philosophy, Industrial Psychology, and my Senior Research Seminar--I'm so behind on that class I am going to attempt to write a passable Annotated Bibliography tomorrow, in preparation for the 25 page paper I need to write for that class.

Yes, life at school is oh-so-very stressful. And I'll be honest, I feel like I'm drowning. So this break is so welcome.

While I've been struggling with school and stress and disabledness, I have still found time to read. I don't think you understand--that that is more a matter of keeping my sanity. In the last two months I've been reading quite a bit.

A few of the titles being Bitten by Kelley Armstrong, Guide to Adulhood by Grace Heilberg (which was not what I thought it would be), Gameboard of the Gods (still unfinished) by Richelle Mead, and the final installment of (what is perhaps my favorite book series right now and has been since last year) The Ruby Circle.

The very last installment of the Bloodlines series by Richelle Mead.


All I will say about this book series is that it is incredible--sure it has its faults...I can't think of any right now (unless you count ending as a fault), but it is incredible and that last book...well, it is surprising and so good. Like, it is incredible. You guys just don't understand. It is just amazing.

And, my heart is broken...I just don't want it to be over.

Which is how the spur of the moment decision to reread the series came about.

Whether or not I'll follow through with it is to be decided but I just need more-ya know?

The wonder of a book

Now this is going to be a different post.
No book review or cover reveal, just a little discussion on some of my thoughts regarding reading.

We all read for some reason, some people only read because they have to, (suckers) but those of us who read because we love it know a secret about reading.

Reading is the greatest form of magic, at least one of them, we can open a book and we can find the secrets of life, and love, and hate, and death within them.

We read to know that we are not alone, I think it was Mark Twain that said that.

I'm struck over and over again of how true this is, though at first hearing this, I didn't understand it. But I do now, when we read certain books we can suddenly be validated. Something we have always felt is felt by another, even if it is just a character in a book, but I think we all know that characters can be more real than celebrities sometimes.

The whole idea of this blog is to share what I love about different books, I think I'm pretty good at finding one thing in every book that I like, of course that doesn't always happen, sometimes the books are just not good and I don't like them.

I'm always struck by how books--stories--fictional characters can last forever in our hearts and minds--which is why this blog is named as it is. Supernovawords. Words that seem to last throughout history.

Did you know that when you look up at night sky some of the stars you are looking at have already died. There light took so long to reach us, that while their light was traveling, they died. Books--good books contain messages and lessons, they may take a long time to reach us, but they do eventually reach us.

A supernova can outshine entire galaxies and radiate more energy than our sun will in its entire lifetime, can you grasp the magnitude of that? And yet its possible that light from it, will take a long time to reach us, by the time we see it, the star could be dead.

Some writers embody that idea, of light shining from the past to meet us, sometimes writing lasts a more than a century. A Supernova writer from our day would be J.K. Rowling, no surprises there. Her stories will last as close to forever as they can get.

I think the true beauty of books lies inside them, you know the entire 'It's bigger on the inside' idea from Doctor Who? Well that is kind of the way books are. They can contain so much more than what they seem to be about. People who tell me that reading is a waste time will never be able to understand why they are so wrong. The amazing thing about books is that can teach you so much, despite the fact that they may be about something ludicrous.
I want to hear about the books that come to mind when you think about this idea that books that are 'bigger on the inside', that they are so much more than what they mean at face value. Leave a comment below. I always want to hear about those really good books that mean so much more to you than the others.

Why read?

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” 

― Oscar Wilde

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” 
― James Baldwin

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” 
― Oscar Wilde

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” 
― Mortimer Jerome Adler

“We read to know that we are not alone.” 
― William Nicholson

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” 
― Anna Quindlen