Continue that train thought please...

It's not that I forgot about this blog, I've just been a tad bit busy.
Busy doing nothing in Mexico. Which was fabulous.

Now, where were we? Oh right. Books.

I'm a Book person. We're a particular group of people. We come in all shapes and sizes. Some of us love libraries. Some of prefer old used bookstores while others are Barnes and Noble snobs. We're a little hard to define. For instance: does someone who only reads anima get to be considered a Book person? To qualify does one have to quota to read each month? I'm not sure. What I do know is that when I meet someone I know pretty quickly if they are a Book person or not. Somehow we recognize each other.
And we know when you're faking too. So put your copy of Twilight away. We're on to you.

I can't tell you if Book people are born or created. Would I be a Book person if my family hadn't moved as much as we did? If we had stayed in Orem all my life would I be a Quilt person? Or would I still have spent my childhood begging my mom to go to the library again. My poor mother didn't know what to do with me. I think she found a reading list of classic literature for high school students and just started recommending them to me when I was in the fourth grade. So my reading career went something like this. Pre-reading on my own -Serendipity books, 1st grade to 4th grade -The Baby Sitter's Club, 4th grade -Victor Hugo, Dickens, The Bronte Sisters and so on. I devored the classics. By high school I knew that Hemingway was overrated, Edmund Dantes was dreamy in a brooding, emotionally unavailable sort of way, and that rebellions as whole seem to cause lots of suffering before they achieve any good. I had acquired a massive vocabulary that I couldn't really pronounce cause I had only read the words and never heard them spoken aloud. I would say phrases that were slightly out of date. In junior high I was nervously conversing with a cute boy about a teacher we both hated and I said "oh yeah, she's awful. I hate her with a fiery passion." I think he laughed at me for a solid five minutes.

In high school I met Matt, who was another Book person. But Matt was a fantasy Book person. He introduced me to Robert Jordan and I nearly failed math as a result. I spent a good few years ransacking book shops in search of good fantasy. Then I slid into a history phase, reading books that were so dry I was afraid they'd start a brush fire. Yet I loved them. I met another Matt and he wasn't much of a Book person but he liked memoirs and he gave me a taste into that world, which is the phase I'm currently in.

So you see, I've always considered myself a fairly well rounded Book person.

Two weeks ago I was visiting some dear friends in Utah. We started discussing books, cause we're prone to do that. In the course of the conversation Andy and Lachelle mentioned several authors and books that.. well, I had never heard of. I felt my face go red. It was if we were all movie fanatics (which we are as well, but thats not the point) and they suddenly started to discuss their favorite war movies and I realized Saving Private Ryan was the only war movie I had seen. It didn't matter how many other movies in other genres I had watched. I was woefully lacking in the war department. I'm not used to feeling inadequate in the literature department. I'm not great at ball sports. I'm kind of flighty, my life plan changes daily. But books, books, that I'm good at. I felt the urge to go to a bookstore immediately and read all the books that Andy mentioned, just so I could catch up. So I could be smart, like them.

Then I realized.
It's ok that I haven't read the same books as them. It's ok that I haven't hit that phase yet. I may never hit that phase. Lachelle and I may never see eye to eye on books. That doesn't make me less of a Book person. It's ok that I prefer classics, and noire and urban fantasy. I'm a Book person, it's not like we're at the top of the cool chain.

Besides, I'm pretty sure Andy and Lachelle love me despite the lack of similar reading tastes.