i libri

Did you expect it? I know I didn't. I only went to church (and then the mall) today but I came home with 13 more books than I left the house with. One I bought..the rest were thrust upon me. It's a good job I had two scarves today: one was used to tie a stack of eleven books (they're study guides, less than a centimetre thick) together so I could skip off to school uphill both ways in the 1940s.

I haven't read any Gordon Korman in a while. In August I was killing time in a Kitchener Public Library and so GK was the author I instinctively checked out. Seems every time I look he's got another few titles out but I'm gaining on him. :) I picked out Born to Rock for whatever reason (appeal or availability, I don't remember) and sat and read about 80 pages in the time I was there. I wanted to push far enough into the book so that I would remember I had started reading it so I could remember to pick it up elsewhere and finish it.
I liked it OK. There were classic GK things that I enjoyed, that made me laugh, that reminded me why he's one of my toppest and things that kept me focused more than just the goal of reading as many pages as I could.

A few weeks later I found that the U of G libby - MUCH to my surprize - has a copy. Rarely one to say no to a free book, I borrowed. I didn't open it until last Thursday, the 31st, largely because I had just finished A Christmas Carol which I had enough trouble putting down and that void was just GAPING now that I was done, but also because New Years Eve smells like fresh starts & second chances and I want my future self to actually reads as much as it seems to read and wants to read. I finished the book this afternoon.
I mean, it was partly quick because of the publication style but it was still 261 pages. I was just voracious this afternoon as the tale picked up to that speed where I don't realize how many pages I've turned (or THAT I'm turning pages) and now 115 has become 125. Such a funny experience to not notice the numbers go up - especially when you've had the opposite experience of continually calculating the pages til the end with every turn...maybe even checking twice while on the same page.

Turns out it's now one of my favorite books. It can def go in my top five of GK books, maybe top three, but it's a favorite for instrumental purposes, for lack of a better term. I don't know how to say it...except that it illuminates and examines things that resonate with me but that I don't know how to articulate or haven't yet tried to articulate. I really connected with it which was totally unexpected. That being said, GK def has an uncanny knack for doing that but usually more in moments, character traits, or artistic decisions instead of with an entire relationship, plot, subplot, sentiment, circumstance. It's great. I feel strangely validated. It was cool: there was one paragraph on one page in which I decided definitively that I would be buying my own copy of the book. Before that I was just enjoying the ride.


I know NYE resolutions usually fizzle out within a week, fortnight or month so I'm not making any great claims or predictions here on January 3rd. I'm still gonna say I'm happy with the start and I'm going to pretend there's such a thing as literary metabolism. If there is then I think the principle of having spicy food for breakfast is gonna transfer.