What do I read and why?

These are a few of my favorite books

You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.  –Paul Sweeney

            I love to read! It takes me to a different place, and gives me the opportunity to escape, even if it is just for a little while. 

But that is where the problem lies…it is never just for a ‘little’ while.  Once I get hooked on a book then all I want to do is read it! The characters become very real to me, and I feel like I am a fly on the wall, watching their lives. I can even read their thoughts! I know the characters intimately, I hang out with them daily.  The characters are with me, even when I am not reading the book.  As I am reading, I can’t wait to finish the book, yet I dread reading the last few pages, for that means I have to say goodbye to the characters, never to see them again.  I think this is why, when I was a child, I used to read series, for this meant that I did not have to say goodbye, for there was always the next volume!

Another one of my favorite things to read, since childhood, is comic strips. I know that I am too old to be reading them, but I really enjoy them. My two favorites are Asterix and Obelix and Zits. They are both very different from each other.

Asterix and Obelix is pure fiction. The characters are two lifelong friends

who live in a little village in France.  Obelix is the large man (but don’t tell him he is large, because he is very sensitive about this topic.  After all, he can’t help it that he fell in the magic potion pot when he was a baby!) Obelix’s constant companion is Idefix, his little dog. They are inseparable.  Asterix is small, but mighty, especially after he has had a big gulp of the magic potion, which makes him invincible.  Their mortal enemy is the Romans, and they love to fight them!  I like this comic because of the word choices the author uses, especially for the names of the Romans and the Gauls.  The people who live in the village are far from perfect, but they are perfect for each other.  They stick together through thick and thin and every book always end the same: a big dinner for the whole village, while the minstrel of the village is tied up and gagged, because he can’t carry a tune. This comic strip definitely makes me escape!

The other comic strip I love is Zits.

I do not read Zits to escape, but more to be able to find humor in every day situations while raising an adolescent boy.  I know many people have said this before, but I feel like the author has a camera set up in my house and that he is describing our situation!  Everything is so recognizable. I love it!

Then there is one more favorite book that I love to read and that is a cookbook.  I collect cookbooks, for I love to cook.  I have old cookbooks that

have been passed down to me from my grandmother.  Every time we go on vacation I like to take a local cookbook home with me. When we have friends over for dinner I spend hours looking through my cookbooks to see what I will prepare for them. My mother was a terrific cook and I think I have her love for good food from her.  Food brings people together and it gives me great pleasure to see my friends enjoying what I cooked for them!