Well, it’s about time…

Took me awhile to get up-to-speed with the rest of you bloggy people, but here I am.  So, what’s it all about?  Well, as most of you know, I’m *ahem* quite fond of yarn.  What most of you might NOT know is that I used to be equally, if not more, obsessed with books.  When I discovered knitting, my reading life suffered a bit, as is to be expected when one finds a new addictive hobby.  Can’t do both at once, unfortunately.  Then, two more things interfered with my book-aholism:  First, pregnancy turned my brain a little mushy and made me incapable of staying awake long enough to finish a page.  Second, new motherhood made my brain even more mushy and even more incapable of staying awake to read.  Lately, though, something’s been happening.  I find that my bedside table is once again supporting a dangerous tower of books.  I find myself daydreaming about the book I’m reading even when I’m not reading it.  I find myself choosing to read over knitting sometimes.  In short, books are back, baby!

So, who knows what I’ll end up writing about here.  Certainly there’ll be knitting, but I’d also like to offer up some thoughts on books and poetry from time to time.  And to kick things off, let me tell you what happened last night, as an illustration of one of the many reasons why I love to read:

I’ve been reading David Sedaris’ newest book of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.  He’s been one of my favorite authors for years.  He’s hilarious and witty and bitingly on-target with his observations of life and people.  One of the essays tells about an elderly man’s battle against some mice that had infested his home.  He fumigated, the mice fled the house and took up shelter in a pile of leaves, the man quickly lit the pile of leaves on fire to incinerate the mice (and the leaves)… and one mouse, aflame, ran blazing from the leaf pile directly back into the house, burning it to the ground. 

Now, the essay is about a lot of other things (as David Sedaris’ essays always are), but this immediately reminded me of a poem by one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins, called “The Country.”  Which is also about a mouse committing arson, this time by dragging a strike-anywhere match along a wooden beam.  (Neither of these sounds very amusing, I realize, but I urge you to read them both and you’ll see…  I can’t post them here without violating copyrights.)  Anyway, so I started thinking, “Of course David Sedaris must love Billy Collin’s poetry – they have the same sense of humor!”

So as soon as I finished the Sedaris essay, I went and dug out my Billy Collins books and read poetry for the rest of the evening.  David Sedaris made me go find Billy Collins.  And that is one reason why I love books.