I have a thing with reading. I love to read blogs, gossip sites and books. If you were to visit a friend’s house, what books would you find? Would they tell a story about who your friend is as a person? Or would you scratch your head and ask why on earth are they reading that?
I have my thing with British authors, chick lit mainly but throw in some Nick Hornby for good measure. Of course, my Harry Potter books are all over the place (with the covers somewhere in my apartment). My autobiographies and biographies are all over the map and then you have my cookbooks. I have a ton of those and some have been marked, splattered and covers taken off since it is much easier to cook without having to deal with the covers.
I also have a running list that used to be in my head of what books I needed to buy but I have since gone viral and they are on my wishlist for Amazon. Sadly, a good portion of those are cookbooks. . .and to think I wonder why I keep gaining weight! LOL
I have books that I reread, books that collect dust and really should just go to McKays but I just can’t part with them. I also have books that I need to read that get relegated to a corner somewhere in my apartment, forgotten until I get desperate.
But let’s get back to these autobiographies for a moment. Should you walk into my apartment, you will see books strewn throughout. I don’t have a bookcase that really goes with my decor, so they are lovingly displayed everywhere. At the moment I have three books that I am reading, something that I try not to do since it slows me down and I feel bad for not giving a book my undivided attention.
If you are brave to venture around my apartment, you will see several books on Julia Child, Stephanie Klein’s first book (loves it!), Ozzy Osborn, Motley Crue and Nikki Sixx’s autobiographies. Maybe I have multiple personalities since I know at least a couple of you are scratching your head thinking what the hell is going on with her?
I loved the 80s hairbands, you must remember that I am a child of MTV, a channel so evil my parents blocked it (yet I still figured out how to watch it. . . oh, I checked, statue of limitations has gone on this one, so I cannot be punished for watching it while the parental unit was not at home). I loved the beat, the dirty sound the guitars played and while I couldn’t have told you the meaning behind any of it nor understood the sexuality of it (at the time) I loved it! I didn’t know about the hard drinking, drugging and sexual escapades that these bands lived daily. I just liked the music. I didn’t wear my hair all teased but I was different remember?
The 80s came and went; the 90s ushered in the grunge look which I could do with relative ease. The music was great and by then my parents gave up on the whole MTV is evil so we block it from our child. I was also into some really cool music, thanks to some really cool friends. I also got into hip hop and rap. It was the beat that sucked me in and still does to this day. The smoothness of a rapper’s voice is intoxicating to me. But I also like classical, jazz, pop, country, etc. I am well rounded in terms of music.
But someone came into my life that reintroduced the hairbands to me and I have to say, I should have never walked away! I still love it, blast it in my car and have been known to stop talking, start drooling when Phil Collin (Def Leppard people) is shown playing guitar with no shirt on. That man is still yummy today.
Sorry, tangent there. So here I am with these books telling all about their wild days and let me tell you, they are wild. I have been educated to say the least! But I love reading them because it shows just how talented, tortured and crazy these musicians are and that they have been most of their lives. It also leaves me with a want (for about two seconds) of getting hammered and chasing the dragon. Then reality sets back in and I remember that while I do like a cocktail, I do not like drugs and prefer to remain a virgin in that sense. It then makes me wonder how in the world did these people and others just like them survive?
I mean, we are talking about massive amounts of coke, herion, pills, alcohol and who knows what else. How did that manage daily? How did Nikki Sixx manage to write some great songs (I will forget about his skills at playing bass but the man has talent as a songwriter and his personal book? Genius, while completely messed up by how he was raised, self medicating with everything but the kitchen sink, his diaries show so much about him and he really is smart)?
Part of me wants to take care of Ozzy, Nikki and Mick but I know that that is not a reality. Plus, they would be so bored around here! But I love seeing where these people come from and where they went. I love seeing the really deep holes they dig themselves in and how they managed to come out of them.
Currently, I am reading a biography on Charles Schultz and it is fascinating. He may not have been a druggie or a drunk but those dark places took him to a place where he created my all-time favorite cartoon, The Peanuts. Same with Julia Child, here is a gal who went against the norm in Pasadena, struck out on her own and found her true love in China. They then spent time in France where she found her second love, cooking. Without her, Americans probably wouldn’t have a clue about proper French fare.
There is a common thread though, I am finding that those creative types tend to walk on a different path, to strike out and go after their dream. There are bad times within their lives but I don’t think anyone has a perfect, sunny life. And if they say they do, well, they are fooling themselves.
I had a great childhood and really, while things have been rough from time to time, I can’t complain. But I did get what Sixx was talking about with depression, the voices in your head, the self doubt. Maybe it is just me, but while I sometimes want to make the voices stop, those voices are the ones that help me sort out a situation. I also talk to my friends, so don’t request the padded room just yet.
I had one ex and his family who thought it was crazy that I read. I found that sad. Reading gives you an escape from reality, just like watching a movie. Another ex would make fun of me for the blogs I read but again, sometimes reading about just how sad Lindsay Lohen’s life is makes you feel a bit better. And a friend of mine nailed it on the head one evening. He texted me asking me to come out for trivia last fall with his friends. I agreed, kind of, but then sat on my couch, in my jammies surfing the net and arguing the pros and cons of going out. Shortly before trivia was to begin, I get another text telling me to change out of my jammies, put the laptop down and come on. And this is a friend that I don’t hang out with often. Yep, I am so set in my ways.
But I love to read and as nerdy as that sounds, it is what keeps me going. I love getting lost in the story and if it is really good, I will lose sleep trying to get it read. With each Harry Potter book, I ended up getting an average of 3 hours sleep and because of that, my first read through of each book was under 24 hours.
Of course, come September or so, I will be pulling out all seven books, I need to reread them all before the premiere Deathly Hallows Part 1.
So, hi, my name is Amy and I am addicted to reading. Not that bad of an addiction if I do say so myself.
Stumbling Through Life 