Lost in My Hometown

I've been a reader since a was tiny--maybe why I got my first pair of glasses when I was in fricking pre-school.  Grew up with my nose in a book.  I specifically remember getting in trouble when I was maybe 10 or so, out camping with my dad and brother, on a hike, being chided for missing all that was around me, all the natural beauty, because I was reading as we walked.  Always with my nose in a book.  So much so that when I turned 16 and bought my first car that I couldn't find my way around Grand Rapids, where I had lived since I was born, because I always, and I mean always, brought a book with me in the car when Dad drove us around town.  

So I'm a lifelong reader, but just in the past year or so there have been a number of new developments in that world for me.  

1)  Graphic novels.  I read comic books a little when I was a kid, but never got real, real into them.  Always enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side back then as well, but that was as far as it went.  Well, my younger brother lead the way for me, and introduced me to graphic novels as an adult when he bought a couple books for me a year and a half or so, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, a brilliant and in-depth look at the art of comics/graphic novels, told as a comic; and Watchmen, by Alan Moore, soon to be a major motion picture, blah blah blah.  Watchmen was a great read, for sure, and mostly felt like a comic book for grownups as it had superheros and all of that.  What really hooked me, though, was the first book I picked up on my own, Blankets, by Craig Thompson, a phenominal coming-of-age type autobiography where the author recounts his childhood growing up in a strictly religious household, school, falling in love for the first time, and coming to his own terms with his faith.  The whole picture-is-worth-a- thousand-words thing is kinda' true.  The illustrations of emotional states are lush and evocative and in particular are a good example of how the graphic novel medium can do things that "normal" books cannot.  Whether you go the route of the grownup comic books (the Fables series is excellent, as is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), memoir (David B's Epileptic, Marjane Satrapie's Persepolis, and many others), or other (Alan Moore's From Hell, a telling of the Jack the Ripper story/investigation), there's a lot to explore.  And p.s. the Capitol Area District Library has a HUGE selection.

2) Audiobooks.  I rent books on CD from the library, rip them to MP3 and then listen to them while going out for a walk, working around the house, and on the commute (25 min drive).  Most of the time I'm listening to one thing on audiobook and then reading a different book the old-fashioned way, but presently I'm reading and listening to the same book, A Clash of Kings, the second book in a fantasy series that was recommended to me, and it's 969 pages not counting the appendix (yes, it has an appendix), and it makes it a lot easier if I can pick up 60+ pages a day without even cracking the book.  

3) Goodreads.  Kinda' the Facebook of reading.  You can add books to your "library," rate and review them, check out reviews and ratings from your friends, joing book groups that talk about certain types of books (yep, I joined a group about which graphic novels to read), etc.  I'm digging it.  

Alright, time to go put out Christmas lights in the shrubbery in front of the house...I'm thinking it's about a 20-page-long project...