Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Girl Who Reads

The Quirks and Benefits of a Girl Who Reads… a paraphrase by Grace Einkauf based off of Rosemarie Urquico’s response to Charles Warnke’s ‘You Should Date an Illiterate Girl’

-She spends her money on books instead of clothes.
-She has problems with closet space because she has too many books.
-She has a list of books she wants to read, and has had a library card since she was twelve.
-She will always have an unread book in her bag.
-She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants.
-She can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
-She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already; lost in a world of the author’s making.
-If you sit down beside her, she might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. (A few tips: Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.)
-She’s easy to please: give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Let her know that you understand that words are love.
-A girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. She understands that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not?
-Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
-She’ll be up at 2am clutching a book to her chest and weeping. (Make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you.)
-She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
-She will write the story of her life, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes.
-She will introduce her children to The Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day.
-In the winters of her old age, she will recite Keats under her breath.
-She can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, find a girl who reads. Or better yet, find a girl who writes.

3 comments:

  1. oh my gosh, Elizabeth, what a GREAT post!!! i think i relate to most of this list, so true!!!!! love this post, might use this on facebook, thank you for this :)
    blessings,
    kara

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  2. Your welcome Kara. I just couldn't not share it.
    It describes me in so many ways.

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  3. Lol! That was me in pretty much all of them! I laughed when I got to 'have kids with strange names' because I already have a mental list of (rather strange and unusual) name ideas for my future children! Which of course I got from my favourite books! :D
    Would you mind if I posted this on my blog? I'll credit you! :)

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