My first teacher was books.
All the books. Stacks and stacks of books is my kind of happiness.
Even if I couldn’t read yet I could at least look at the pictures and infer a story and tell it to myself.
That all changed after I taught myself to read with the book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. After that I could learn the books’ secrets for myself. So I read and read and read and read.
All the books.
A habit of a lifetime.
The most recent book that I read was my current comfort series about an alien living on an alien outpost because he was saved from his home world due to being a child slave because he didn’t fit the mold they made for him before he was born. The series is about a singing contest to be chosen to create a band the entire universe would listen to. This is the Tinkered Starsong series by Gail Carriger. I’ve read them a lot since it was released in 2023. I think I am on my fourth re-read of the novels Divinity 36, Demigod 12, and Dome 6. They are that good.
Because, to me, books are a comfort.
We all need comfort these days.
I don’t read nearly as much as I’ve read in the past. In 2014 I set out to read 200 books that year. I blew that number out of the water by year’s end with over 330 books read.
I read all genres. Math books, text books, science fiction, fantasy, romance, thrillers, cook books, fiction. It is all worthwhile to read. Some of it may need additional conversation but I’ll do that if I need to. I will make my own mind up about the worthiness of your text.
Some people want to be able to decide what other people read. To narrow the vast library in the sky and in all of existence down to less than 100 books. That they deem appropriate in their tiny little narrow minds.
The only problem is
- Ew
- Who made them the thought police?
- I will read what I want
- <rude word inserted here> them
The theme for 2026 Banned Books Week is
“Let Books Be
Protect the Freedom to Read”
I will continue to read what I like. I don’t give a fluffy rat’s behind if you think it inappropriate.
But, like the ideas around bodily autonomy for women, at the root it is about control. Control is being lost and sections of society will not stand for it. I mean of course the sections losing that control.
Uh, huh.
Again, ew.
I’m off to the library and I will hit up the bookstore on my way home.
