Sam not only made my day today by telling me that The Perks of Being a Wallflower is being made into a movie, but last week, thanks to Facebook creeping, she accidentally introduced me to a blog that has been copied, bookmarked, and tabbed on my crumbling MC laptop, right next to my Y schedule: http://thefrenemy.tumblr.com/. Seriously. Best. Blog. Ever. I wish I could write as well as this person does. Today this blogger basically took my thoughts about e-books and Nooks and created the most eloquent post ever. My favorite passages:
"There is nothing, nothing like a book that is yours. The tattered and wrinkled dog, the pages you have scanned over and over, rubbed your fingers down the spine as real as human flesh. The first time you read a book that is yours is like finding a soulmate. It could be a sentence, three sentences, a paragraph before you know. You are hooked. You hug the book. You are elated at finding the kind of words that speak to all the parts of your bones and organs. You take it with you to all the apartments you’ll ever have, packing it safely in the boxes you write BOOKS on. You underline the BOOKS part in the box it is in so you know to be extra careful with it. You go to certain pages when you are sad. 97 will make you cry. 313 will make you laugh. 14 contains the life mantra you live by. You look at the corner crease in the upper right back cove- that came when you let your best friend borrow it. The ripped binding. The underlined sentences. The oil stain in the third chapter. It is as weathered and loved as your very first blanket. The reminder of somebody you loved, you take it back to the time in your life you were in Pennsylvania whipping your hand out the car window. This book is as memory inducing as a favorite song. For me, this book is The Picture of Dorian Gray. For you, it is whatever made you love the written word. Pull it out when you want to visit beloved friends."
"With real books, there are moments in a a doctor’s office. You watch a girl, maybe fifteen, pull out the Great Gatsby. You remember the moment you fell for it during the bare legged swing and lemonade sip of your sophomore summer. That month you soaked up the pain of love with the kind of awe and understanding that you will never be as brilliant as Fitzgerald. Or Vonnegut. You remember reading sentences from the great and the dead that throw you against a wall or rip your heart out, so you touch the pages and run your fingers down the ink in substitute. There are moments on the subway. A cute, tousled hair kind of guy pulls out a book you have never read. You watch his face, the movements of his mouth as he soaks it up and for a moment you love him. You take out your book, ruffle through your purse, find that paperback and let somebody fall in love with you as you struggle to read with one hand gripped on the crowded railing."
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
This week has been an emotional one. One of the girls in the theatre department just lot her mom. I think as you go through college and get involved with your major, the other people who are with you become family, and even if you don't hang out with them daily, there is the sense of fierce protectiveness and love. So when one loses someone or something, it affects everyone. I'm not going to lie, it made me feel a lot of things: incredibly sad, the shock that while I may be stressing about little things, there are much bigger things happening, and the sudden need to call my own mom, apologize for our fight last week, tell her that I love her a lot, and take her off of my "Block" list from Facebook (yes, I took her off of Facebook. What can I say, I was mad...). And I guess I needed to read something, see something that would maybe restore a little sparkle, a little hope in my world. And well, for me, that other blog post did just that.
So, Sam? Thanks, lady.
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