BookS!

I love books.

I love to collect them, see them lying around and most of all READ them.

I love going to the library and can spend all day wandering and reading my way through a book store.

I love the book section of thrift stores and our used book store in town.

I flat out love watching my kids read, have way too many children's picture books (more my addiction than theirs), would give half my paycheck to Scholastic and let my boys stay up waaaay past bedtime when they are reading and just want to "finish this chapter"..(and the next, and the next.)

I even enjoy seeing strangers reading books, especially in public places when they are really into it and the whole world has disappeared around them for the world within the book. I have found myself, in the past, getting jealous like I would over a lover, when I see someone else reading one of my cherished friends...(its mine, mine...) and other times joyful over a mutually found friend.

I am not into the Kindle or Books on line, although I think the technology is cool. Audio books are good too, but I prefer the hold-it-in-my-hand, carry-it-with-me touchability of books.

My son is currently reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I am loving the enthusiasm and enraptured focus of his joy with this book. Seeing yet another generation enthralled by the story-weaving of Mark Twain. He shares bits and pieces with me and I listen, ponder, as if I had never heard the story.....secretly excited about what I know he has yet to discover.

Although I love movies too, they just do not thrill my soul quite the way that my books will, with the longer, slower investment of my soul in the reading.

I am reading Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl...again. And while at the library, I picked up Memories of Anne Frank, Reflections of a Childhood Friend. The second book is reflections of Hannah Elizabeth Pick-Goslar, Anne's close friend in Amsterdam for 9 years, before she went into hiding. They also met again, briefly, in the concentration camps.

I read the entire book, (Memories/Reflections) in one night.

I am taking a slower stroll through

Anne's precious words.

Oh, how these two books move me, along with a photo book of Anne and her family which I tear-stained while waiting on my children at the library.

My words are inadequate to convey my emotions and questions..... {I think of the title of the book, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, and want to change the words to "The horrible things that Heaven Bears and ask How, how ...how???} Ah....and even today, we still face one people group degrading another for no other reason than ignorant, evil prejudice. My soul aches.

I am so blessed and thankful for books.

What are you reading?