37 Signs You May Love Books A Little Too Much

1. You have books stacked in front of books and are still running out of room on your shelves.

2. You are also running out of room on your counter.

3. And your table.

4. You are slightly in love with a fictional character.

5. You have cried over the death of a fictional character.

6. Pretty much all of your #friendshipgoals come from fictional characters.

7.  For that matter, most of your #relationshipgoals do too.

8. You have been known to lose track of time in a bookstore.

9. And in a library.

10.  And in bed when a good book is involved, which has probably resulted in more lost sleep than your entire sexual history so far.

11. You’ve ignored a call once or twice (or more) in order to finish reading the paragraph you’re on.

12. Two hours later, you realize you still haven’t checked nor returned the call because you kept reading.

13. Sometimes, you don’t even hear the call in the first place because you’re just so into the book.

14.  Several of your books have food stains from reading while you eat, because you can’t bear to stop.

15. They also have water stains, from reading in the bathtub.

16. One or two may also have lipstick stains because…. well that one is a long story.

17. You have ended friendships with people who refuse to return borrowed books.

18. You have ended relationships with people that say reading is “a waste of time when you could be out there, living life.”

19. When visiting friends, you have been known to become so intrigued with books you find at their house that you have to borrow them.

20. That’s the best-case scenario. You have also been known to visit a friend, find an interesting book at their house, and start reading then and there.

21. Three hours later you realize it’s three hours later and you’ve been completely ignoring your friend.

22. They may have even gone to sleep at this point. You don’t know until you start searching for them.

23. Amazingly enough they are actually okay with this, because you’ve done it before and they’re awesome enough to be understanding of your book problem.

24. Almost everyone you know has gotten you a book for a present at some point.

25. Or a gift card for a bookstore.

26. All of your good friends know there is at least one book (if not more) that they should never, ever mention unless they want to hear you rant about it for hours.

27. Actually, several of your coworkers know that too.

28.  In fact, so do some of the random people that you see every day on your commute.

29. Your ideal vacation is going to the beach, because then people are cool with you spending most of the day reading.

30. You love rainy days for the same reason.

31. Also winter… basically anything that can be an excuse to stay in with your books.

32. If you didn’t need to get food and more books, you might never leave the house.

33. You legitimately like books clubs.

34. For the book discussion, not for the food and wine.

35. You love jokes about how much people love books.

36. You also started a blog mainly to convince people that reading should be a sport.  

37. And to give you an online forum for all of your book rants.

A Year in Books

I realized today as I was memorizing my parking spot number (D2) that I’m probably more of a Star Wars fan than I thought (I visualized R2-D2 to remember it of course). However, my primary geekdom remains and will always be my bookworm habits.

Last year my friend Erin revealed that apparently the average American only reads 4 books a year. She decided to track how many books she read during the year to see how it compared. Given my own love of reading and obsessive tracking habits, I decided to do the same.

Now I didn’t actually start tracking the books I was reading until April (since Erin’s post wasn’t until the end of March to give me the idea), so I don’t have a full year’s worth of data. Even with missing a few months I realized there are actually a lot of interesting trends I could determine from the numbers.

Let’s start with the simple logistics. I had two sheets I used to track information. One was my number sheet where each month I tracked the numbers of books I finished reading during the month. Initially I had broken this down in two columns, print books and iPad books. I quickly decided I wanted a third column to track which books were actually re-reads that I had read at some point before. On the second sheet, I simply listed for each month the name and author of each book I finished reading, highlighting in blue any re-reads. 

As the months passed I realized there were some issues with my tracking mechanisms. Because I didn’t add a book to the sheet until I finished reading it, what would happen frequently is that I would read the bulk of the book one month but finish it the first or second day of the month where it was actually tracked. This shows especially in November. I didn’t do any reading in November because of NaNoWriMo, except that I had a book I was reading that I finished on November first simply because I only had like 40 pages left.

The other main issue is that this setup doesn’t capture all of my reading, only the books completed. I’ve discussed before how I don’t really read in a linear fashion, and many times I start a book and then give up. The thing is sometimes these are VERY large books, and I read 200-300 pages before I give up. That’s a lot of reading that’s not being accounted for!

Still, while keeping that in mind, I think nonetheless I gathered enough information to start identifying some of my reading trends in a year.

Let me throw some numbers at you. I read a total of 65 books from April 1 through December 31^st. Not bad for a year. 40 books were print, 7 were on the iPad, and 18 were actually re-reads.

Typically I read about 6 new books a month. I had a least 1 re-read a month as well, although technically it might average out to 2 per month.  

There were 3 months during the year that bucked the trends a bit, and I find it very interesting to consider what happened during those months.

In July, I actually read 12 new books. My first thought was maybe I had started a very engaging new series, but looking back at which books they were, actually only 2 were in the same series.

August was the next month that was a little off. I read far less in August (only 4 books tools). Most of the books were re-reads, I only read 1 new book in the month.

The last month that didn’t match the normal pattern was September. September was split evenly between new books and re-reads, but all the new books I read that month were on the iPad instead of print.

Those 3 months just so happen to be part of our “busy season” at work. Given what I remember of the year and what I see on the spreadsheet, I’ve drawn some interesting conclusions about what happened.

The first conclusion is that when I’m stressed/unhappy I read more. Although August was a little lower that was partially because of people visiting and things like that, but both July and September were higher than the average. As the stress/unhappiness continues, I tend to fall back on re-reading. Looking through the specific books I chose to re-read, I realized I have some “comfort books” and that I turn to them to cheer myself up.

The second conclusion is that despite all my complaining about e-reading, when push comes to shove it works. Why did I have more iPad books in September? I had started the Mortal Instruments series, and I decided to download them on the iPad as other people in my family were going to read them too (we share an account). Plus when I finished one I wanted the next in the series instantly - none of that driving to the bookstore stuff when wincest is on the line! And despite the fact that I was reading on the iPad, which I always say doesn’t feel like a real book and I can’t do it easily at home, I managed to get through 4 books on there in one month.

All in all I think I did pretty good for a year of reading. I’ve started tracking my books for 2014 (2 finished so far), but I still need to think through if I want to make some edits to the spreadsheet. It might be interesting to start tracking the books I abandon and maybe later figure out if there is a pattern to that as well. Plus at some point I should look for a method of tracking non-traditional reading, like fanfiction and manga. I’m also excited to see if trends change year by year. Maybe I start to read less, or read more. Who knows! 

P-p-p-poker Face

Last night I was playing poker with some of my boys, which let me tell you I haven’t done in YEARS. We went through a big poker phase in high school, which continued a bit into college, and then I just stopped. Possibly because I am the worst poker player in the history of the world.

Seriously, poker is complicated. I hardly ever remember what beats what (it seems to me like 2 pair should be better than 3 of a kind, because there are 4 cards involved, but they always tell me I’m wrong on that). I have this issue where the 6 and 9 cards look the same and confuse me. Not to mention I continuously forget the denominations for the chips.

Even worse, as they tell me in Jennifer Crusie’s wonderful book Faking It, poker is actually about knowing the other players. You need to know who’s bluffing and who’s actually got something good. The idea is you learn everyone’s “tell” and use that to better play the game. If you’re not a reader, you can see excellent examples of “tells” in movies like Maverick and Casino Royale.

This is a good (and sexy) poker face.

I find this just about impossible. I’m not particularly good at reading people. I’ve discussed before how I’m constantly missing the conversational subtext. You can imagine how well I do reading the subtleties of the poker table.

The amazing thing is that I do sometimes win at poker. Last night I was one of the last 3 playing. Probably would have finished 3^rd, but we just quit the game. How do I explain this? Well, because of my horrendous poker face.

To be clear, ideally you should have a GOOD poker face. Also to be clear, I’m talking strictly about your face at the moment (none of the Lady Gaga muffin-bluffin whatnot is under discussion). A good poker face is like a mask. No one knows what you’re thinking; no one knows when you’re bluffing.

A BAD poker face gives everything away. Every emotion - from when you pick up your cards, to the moment of the flop, to when you’re betting - makes it entirely clear what you’re doing.

I have a BAD poker face. But my saving grace in poker is that half the time I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’m bluffing, and my face tells everyone thus, but meanwhile I didn’t realize I have a straight in my hand. This has happened multiple times (although not always specifically with a straight).

My hysterical laughing prolly didn't help matters.

Honest and true time, this is something I should probably work on. Not specifically for poker (I don’t play that often, and worst case scenario I could cover up like one of my friends last night... see example to the left) but more so for life. I sometimes worry that I have overly expressive eyes and face. We used to play a game in college where we would cover the bottom half of our face and guess emotions just based on the eyes. When they were looking at my face, my friends had a 100% success rate. My sign (Taurus, for those that don’t pay attention) is known for our “bedroom eyes.” Well that’s fine and dandy except that I have no control over it whatsoever. So at any given point I do not know what my face is telling you.

This is especially dangerous because my thoughts are all over the place. What shows up on my face may have absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. I swear almost once a month I get in a situation where someone’s like “what’s THAT look about!?!?” and I don’t even know what they mean.

Now if you haven’t realized this already I’m about to reveal something super useful for dealing with me. What this all comes down to is I can’t lie worth crap when it matters.

I have to clarify, “when it matters,” because for really stupid stuff I can lie awesomely. I can look you straight in the eye and convince you I grew up in Russia on a beet farm. That’s not even an exaggeration; I totally had a guy from work believing that for like 5 minutes. Then I realized he was taking me seriously and I had to clear it up. I only have this ability when I find what I’m saying so absolutely ridiculous I don’t think anyone will believe me.

So when I seriously need to lie, such as for surprise parties, or when I’m talking about people I’m interested in, it doesn’t actually work. I’d be a horrible spy. I blame this entirely on my stupid face. Because even when I try to control it, the best I can do is a lack of emotion, which apparently looks so completely different from normal that no one believes it anyway.

The right puppy eyes could take over the world!

Maybe this should be a goal for next year, learning to control my expressiveness. There’s a scene in Memoirs for a Geisha where Chiyo learns how to use her eyes to make a delivery boy drop his packages. Granted, she had awesome eyes, but the idea appeals to me nonetheless. If I could learn to use my expressiveness who knows what I could do?

A Reader's Rant

There are many things in life that irritate me – airport delays, people that tell me what to do, people that tell me what not to do, people that wear peach lotion – just to name a few. If you’re noticing the pattern (typically it involves people and their actions), yeah I’ve noticed that too. I have very low tolerance for stupid mistakes that could easily be corrected. This is why I go absolutely BONKERS over the fact that almost all written articles these days contain typos.

Seriously, it’s getting to be ridiculous. Especially considering that technology will now even catch some of our errors, and the rest could be caught with a quick edit.

I'm allowed to laugh, I'm an English Major

For the most part it’s not even grammatical errors, or if it is, it’s one that looks like it was just overlooked, not that the author lacks a basic understanding of grammar. Despite assumptions from friends, I’m really not that much of a grammar nazi. Some grammar and writing conventions are outdated or restrict the sentence flow. Especially the rule about ending with a preposition.

I had a teacher in high school that actually started trying to follow this rule, and would reword his sentences to make sure they didn’t end with a preposition. We thought it was funny, because half the time the sentence ends up weird.

Personally, I prefer writing to flow the same way a person talks. I still think there are different levels of writing, just like there are different levels of talking. I don’t use the exact same phrases with friends as I do with clients. But I don’t completely change my style of talking either.

If it sounds like I’m being hypocritical, complaining about writing errors and then excusing ungrammatical writing, I understand. Actually I have a few areas where I totally admit my hypocrisy, but this is not one of them. You see, what annoys me with writing errors are the stupid mistakes that could have been fixed if somebody had just checked for them. It’s not even the writing I’m mad at, it’s the laziness of not having someone proofread.

I’m talking about obvious errors here. I’m not even too hung up on things like “to” instead of “too.” Those sort of things are actually easy to overlook if you’re rushing (although why someone is rushing through instead of taking the time to properly look over their work is a good question).

When you write, you get in a certain mind frame. It’s quite simple to misread your writing so that you don’t catch errors. In fanfiction, most writers have what they call a “beta.” It’s basically an editor. Somebody to read through your work and check for those types of errors before you post.

Now sometimes a writer will post a new story, or a new chapter, without their beta checking through it. Some writers never use a beta (which actually includes me, I’ve never had a beta for my fanfiction). Typically they will include an acknowledgement or apology for any errors that do come up.

But that’s fanfiction, it’s not published, it’s just people screwing around for fun.

I’m more concerned with accredited media. I check Yahoo and MSN articles fairly often. It is becoming ridiculous how often I find simple errors in the articles. Seriously isn’t somebody getting paid for this writing? How can they push out news stories without doing a simple check of the article??

Again, I’m not even talking about little things like whether or not the Oxford comma is being used (although while we’re on the subject – if you do not support usage of the Oxford comma we should no longer be friends. Just saying). This is an example from earlier this week on yahoo. 

Somehow a random stream of words ended up in the middle of an article. Twice. Was this supposed to be a link? HOW DID THEY MISS THIS!?

Granted, with an online article I suppose they figure they can always edit it later. You have no idea how furious I get when this happens in printed materials.

Last month I borrowed a book from my friend Kevin called Armor. It was pretty fabulous. I think of it as a nice mix of Starship Troopers, the book, and Starship Troopers, the movie. But the typos. OMG. Every time I talked to Kevin about it (he actually hasn’t read it yet) that’s all I could talk about. There was a bajillion of them! All over the place! Like huge, glaringly obvious errors. More than once it actually duplicated an entire section of text further down the page, in the middle of a different paragraph. You can just guess how disconcerting that made the reading experience.

I’m currently in the middle of an excellent zombie book. It may be my new favorite zombie book ever (although actually I don’t have a current favorite zombie book, as I get halfway through reading them and then freak the heck out of myself and have to stop). It’s brilliant, as it explores the world 20 years after the zombie outbreak, and how it’s changed the way the news is reported and accessed. It’s called Feed by the way if you want to check it out. But even in this book I have caught more than once random question marks appearing in the middle of a sentence.

So if my sentence is supposed to be “people are sucking hardcore and not catching these stupid mistakes” it instead becomes “people are sucking hardcore and not? Catching these stupid mistakes.” These are not questions, just sentences, and the question mark doesn’t even appear in a logical place.

Now with fanfiction, an author can choose whether or not to use a beta. With published material, I always assumed that before investing good money in publishing a story, someone at some point would invest in a proofreader. Am I wrong? Are we sacrificing edits in order to deliver results faster?

I give you free reign to laugh at me now when my posts have little typos. It’s happened before, and I try to fix them whenever I can. I do check through my own writing at least once before putting it up, but I can’t catch everything. It would behoove me to have someone else check through as well, but this is just a blog for me to play around. I promise if at any point in life I’m going to have something published for real, it will be read over so many times that at least the informal proofreaders (me, plus friends and family I guilt trip) will have sections memorized.

After all, my momma raised me that if you’re going to do something, you don’t do it quick, you do it right.

 

If Life Gives You Melons

My absolute favorite t-shirt (thanks Kevin!!)

I am convinced I am dyslexic. Because I also happen to be a Taurus, you can’t talk me out of thinking I’m dyslexic, but it annoys me when people (my father) doubt my dyslexia. It’s not like I wanted to be dyslexic. I certainly didn’t choose to be this way. And it’s hardly my fault that just because I have autocorrect and happen to be a super awesome speed reader that my dyslexia is not immediately apparent.

 Most people would assume if you read well, you’re not dyslexic. The thing with my reading, is that I speed read. The thing with speed reading, is that you don’t actually read the full word. You really just take in the beginning and end of the word. The thing with just reading the beginning and end of the word, is that generally it doesn’t matter if you are reordering the middle letters the wrong way (so if you’re reading it as cheif instead of chief it doesn’t matter). The really nice thing about speed reading, is that you are filling in the word based on context. Which is why when I read a word wrong it becomes pretty obvious.

For example, today I was reading an email that had a word that I thought was “entangled.” However once I finished the sentence (they were very entangled and responsive) I realized it sounded pretty weird. They were responsive to being entangled? Is this some kind of Fifty Shades of Grey thing? So I looked at the word again, studied it a moment or two, and realized it was “engaged.” Here right above “engaged” it said “attend,” so I did my usual letter shifting… and ended up with “entangled.”

This kind of thing happens all the time, and I just ignore it. I actually never thought of it as a problem, I assumed it’s normal. I mean doesn’t everyone have that problem of words and letters constantly moving around?

Apparently not.

Really, I first suspected my dyslexia back in school. I HATED math with a passion. I found it almost impossible to memorize all the stupid formulas, and I was always frustrated because no matter how much time I spent looking over quizzes or tests, inevitably there would be a least one question I missed because at some point my 203 turned into a 230. I’d get some credit, because my work was right. I understood the process. Just those stupid numbers kept getting switched.

You’d really think this would have flagged me for my teachers to mention dyslexia, but to be fair it wasn’t every single problem. It was more like 1 or 2 questions every other quiz/test/homework. I guess they thought I was just sloppy. Or couldn’t read my own handwriting, which is a fair possibility considering how crappy my handwriting is.

Nonetheless, since no one ever mentioned anything I assumed it was all in my head, and carried on.

It wasn’t until I was working with my current company that I really became convinced I was dyslexic. I was frequently making calls, and I hate calling people because half the time I end up dialing the wrong number. I was complaining a bit to a coworker, and he mentioned some similar issues, and then said the magic words “I’m dyslexic.” Which got me thinking. If he was dyslexic, couldn’t I be too?

That weekend I happened to be back home with my parents, and during some down time, I decided to look up some common symptoms for dyslexia. I found this questionnaire of 20 common dyslexic symptoms. It then gave some general results (such as most people have no more than 4 “yes” responses) and also said if you have more than 9 “yes” responses it’s a strong indicator of dyslexia. Guess what? I had ***14***!!!

I raced around my house telling my father (who didn’t believe me), my mother (who just kind of listened and nodded), and my grandmother (who was visiting). Now wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I tell my grandmother about the results, she casually said, “Well you know, Jerry was dyslexic.”

Jerry being my grandfather. Dyslexia being genetic. This clearly being something I should have known.

I suspect my father doubts my dyslexia because of how eager I was to accept it. But why not? Do you realize, being dyslexic would explain so many of what I thought were just random quirks? Things I always thought made me stupid (like my severe issues with left/right, and my inability to tell time unless I have a digital watch) are actually common symptoms of dyslexia.

I’ll conclude this post with a list of common dyslexia symptoms THAT I HAVE, because it’s pretty good proof in my court. Not because of how long the list is, just the sheer randomness of things I’ve always been teased about (like how I pronounce words, or the way I hold my pencil) which are apparently somehow linked with dyslexia. Also, I just like lists (as does my friend Erin).

1.     Spells phonetically and inconsistently.

2.     Confusion over left and right.

3.     Seems to "Zone out" or daydream often; gets lost easily or loses track of time.

4.     Leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words, and syllables when speaking.

5.     Shows dependence on finger counting, tricks, and gimmicks.

6.     Can do arithmetic, but fails word problems.

7.     Hears things not said or apparent to others; easily distracted by sounds.

8.     Feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading or writing.

9.     May lack depth perception and peripheral vision.

10. Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports.

11. Handwriting varies or is illegible.

12. Trouble with writing or copying; pencil grip may be unusual.

13. Prone to motion-sickness.

14. Has difficulty telling time.

15. Can be an extra deep or light sleeper.

16. Strong sense of justice; emotionally sensitive; strives for perfection.

17. Poor memory for sequences.

When Life Gives You Lemons... (a defense of fanfiction)

There’s been a lot of talk recently about fanfiction. Some authors have been saying they don’t approve of it, and why their work is off limits. I respect their opinions, but honestly some of the comments are just a little nasty, and seem to misunderstand the point of fanfiction.

My college roommate and I actually bonded over fanfiction. We had been randomly assigned, and didn’t have much contact before coming to college. Just a few emails that managed to completely freak her out, poor thing, when I mentioned my bird alarm clock. For my part, I had initially thought I’d been assigned a guy which had thrown me in a tizzy. This is what happens when you skim emails. I caught the name “Patrick” without noticing that “Hall” right next to it. 

Roomie & me trying on funny hats

We were pretty typical random roommates the first week. We tried to hang out sometimes but often left to do our own thing. In the room, we were incredibly polite to each other. Although we had some similar interests, we didn’t exactly click initially. There was just too much awareness that we were stuck in a room together and didn’t really know the other person. What was appropriate to share? What would super offend the other? It wasn’t until my roommate came back in earlier than expected one day and caught me reading fanfiction that our barriers came down. Here she loved fanfiction too! It was a guilty pleasure we shared, and from there we found more and more shared interests and habits, until we became inseparable and people started to referring to us as a combo package instead of separate individuals.  

I’m more of what one calls a fanfiction lurker. I read TONS of it. Not constantly. I definitely go through cycles, but when I’m getting my fanfiction fix I’ll read for hours straight. To me, fanfiction is the ultimate expression of fan devotion in writing. It shows that somebody loves the world and characters you’ve created so much, that they want more of them. They want a chance to play in the world. If it’s a series that’s over, they want a chance to envision what comes next for the characters. 

Now some of the comments about fanfiction have implicated that fanfiction authors don’t have enough creativity to write their own material, or that it’s a waste of their time to devote so much effort to working with someone else’s creations.

Again, I disagree. Many great fanfiction authors write their own stories as well, and some are working on novels. And sure, some stories are just as long, if not longer, than a typical book. But fanfiction gives authors the opportunity to practice their craft and have fun with it. Writing should be fun. It also is absolutely an art that must be practiced in order for one to excel. If you’re trying to write frequently, and you have a fandom you love, why not combine those things and write new adventures for your favorite characters? It’s a great exercise.

Writing (good) fanfiction is surprisingly tough. You have to stay true to characters that your audience already knows, but you don’t want to fall in the trap of using just a few main traits to define them. You need to think of new ways to describe places, characters, and situations without using the exact same verbiage of the original creator, or the tons of other fanfic authors. It’s like being given a prompt in a writing class. While you’re following certain conventions, it’s up to you to come up with something unique for your story. Unlike a class though, you have so many more people working with the same prompt. How do you represent the fandom you love so much, without being cliché and writing the same thing as everyone else?

Within any fandom you’ll find certain themes that have been done to death. There are also some themes that pop up across genres that have created a language used for the fanfiction world. Familiar words like lemons take on whole new connotations, while new terms like mary sue and mpreg are created.

There are also trends in the writing style of fanfiction. When I first started reading it, way back around 2000, most fanfiction was written in a style with characters performing *actions* or lines and activities described in a play type format. There was a lot of interaction from the author as well. It was fairly frequent to see the author inserted at some point in the story, describing their control over the characters. At that point in time fanfiction was more lighthearted. It allowed people to write and read, while still making fun of itself.

Now fanfiction is both more serious, and less precise. Good fanfiction has evolved into real stories. The author is more removed from the process, although there is still a tendency to have author notes at the beginning or end. Unfortunately, while fanfiction now takes itself more seriously, there has also been an influx of authors with less writing skills. A whole new generation thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to write stories in txt talk or lack even basic punctuation.

The tone of responses has changed as well. Before, fanfiction was not widely known. At this point, it seems like almost everyone has heard of fanfiction, and unfortunately, they are only acquainted with the bad examples. Thus great fanfic writers start to write less and less as they get few constructive comments and far more flames.

I happen to write fanfiction. Not very often, to be sure. Nothing extraordinary. But I find it very calming. When I write fanfiction for some reason I tend to write fluffy, silly pieces. I don’t do that in my own writing. My stories tend to be far more angsty. Fanfiction provides me with a way to write the type of stories that for whatever reason I can’t write with my own characters.

Additionally, I often find myself loving the side characters of a story, movie, or series. Fanfiction lets me get to further explore and get to know characters that get very little screen time. It lets me rationalize their choices and actions, and sometimes reflect on my own life as I often write about characters I identify with. Fanfiction, like any type of writing, is basically another form of therapy.

So before you judge the world of fanfiction, let me ask you, have you ever discussed a movie, book, or tv series? Have you ever spoken to someone about a fandom you love, analyzing plot or motives? Complained that you should have seen more of Snape’s back-story, that Anakin turned evil too quickly, or that X-Men 3… well basically ruined everything about the series? Then you’ve started on the path to fanfiction. The only difference with fanfiction is that the authors have taken the time to write out their own interpretation instead of just discussing it.

Someday if I’m a famous author, it’s totally cool to write fanfiction about my world. My momma taught me young that imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Why Reading Should be a Sport.

 I’ve never been great at sports. Actually, I’ve never even been okay at sports. Part of it is my fail genes. I have no hand-eye coordination. Seriously. None. I can’t even throw things in any kind of consistent fashion. I’m not even sure I know how to aim. I think I’m aiming, but considering where things end up I’m starting to suspect otherwise.

For a while I played soccer, which I did much better at (and yes, I’m ending my sentence with a preposition, deal with it).  Eye-feet coordination is way more my thing. But that didn’t last long, because of the second part of the issue… my inability to stick with activities. Sure, if I had practiced I’d probably get better, but I never liked any sport enough to dedicate the time. Probably for the best. My brother swears I would have gotten kicked out of almost every soccer game as I got older. I was a teeny bit aggressive.

Now reading, that was something to get into. Fate & genetics, nurture & nature all combined to develop my reading skills. Initially I found it very hard to learn to read. I wasn’t one of those prodigies reading newspapers at age 2.  I remember struggling with stupid flashcards while my mom quizzed me in her bedroom. There were a lot of ducks all over the walls. Maybe that’s why I hate ducks? I subconsciously associate them with hating to learn my phonics? Nah, it’s more likely the result of a vicious duck & geese attack while trying to innocently feed them bread.

Anyway, despite the rough start learning the basics, I loved reading. Both my parents are great readers. They read to me frequently when I was young. Actually, my mom used to read The Hobbit to my brother and I. Talk about starting neekness at a young age.

I still might have just been an average reader at best, but other factors combined to increase the appeal. They say reading is an escape, and boy was it ever for me. I used reading to escape more and more situations until it was my answer for everything.

Take for instance my brother. We get along great now, but when we were younger I couldn’t stand him. I’ll give you a hint why… his common nickname was “Annoy Boy.” He could only entertain himself by irritating others. My parents told me time and time again to ignore him. But I couldn’t UNTIL I started reading all the time. There’s this great about me and reading. When I’m really into a book the world is dead to me. You can be talking right to me and I don’t hear a thing. That is not an exaggeration. At all.

Then there was the whole thing with me being a picky eater. I’d like to first point out that while I’m still not perfectly normal on that factor (ask me about sandwiches sometime…) I am MUCH, MUCH better. As a child there were very few things I could eat. Nothing complicated. Food couldn’t touch. Nothing even remotely spicy. Even food I liked could gross me out depending on the texture. I soon realized that if I read while eating, I didn’t notice the taste or texture as much. I wasn’t allowed to read during family dinners, but this saved me a lot during lunch.

Additionally, I was a very fearful child. Many things scared me… aliens, spiders, the dark, sharks… just to name a few. I also had trouble sleeping. This led to frequent reading at night when I couldn’t fall asleep, and starting to smuggle books into the bath so I could distract myself from the possibility of sharks emerging from the drain.

I know, I know, at this point you’re thinking I was the worst child in the world. Luckily I was at least adorable. But what it comes down to is that eventually I became a super awesome fast reader. Seriously, I’m a champ.

Back when the Harry Potter books were still coming out I worked part-time at a bookstore, and we would always have a midnight party when the new book was released. I would work the midnight party, get home late, read the entire new book, and then open the store the next morning by 8. When the 7^th book came out I actually re-read a book every night that week so that the whole series would be fresh in my mind. This was while working 2 jobs, roughly around 70 hours a week. I worked during the day, came home and read, and besides the night of the midnight release for Deathly Hallows still managed to get a decent amount of sleep.

So why should reading be a sport? Because I’d win. Not every time. There’s always a faster, more comprehensive reader out there. But at least some times!

It seems like everything else can be defined as a sport these days. Seriously what is the criteria? In college my friends and I decided that any activity that can make your nipples bleed counts as a sport. This came up after discussing cross-country track, and while I’d like to say I’m not that one that made that definition, there is a strong possibility it was me. They always seem to blame me for those kinds of things. Anyway, this quickly opened up the world of sports to several new activities in our minds. At the time, reading was not one of them.

I guess it could be. Maybe if you accidentally closed the book quickly and your chest was bare? Or if you were reading naked while walking down the steps and tripped? I think the better plan is to just make a new definition for sports. Something that would include reading, so we can start having reading matches. I can win some, get an endorsement, and eventually get paid to read. That would be AWESOME.