A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

I read a lot. And I don’t have a particular genre that I like, although I do prefer fiction over non-fiction. And it’s not that I don’t like non-fiction, it’s more that I so often have to deal with reality that for me reading is something to get me out of this world and into another. I was thinking the other day that the chore of the daily things in life can really get you down. I am grateful for so many privileges I have in life, but the day-to-day mendacities aren’t really soul-growing stuff, you know?

I keep waiting for that moment when I do find the doorway to Narnia in the back of a wardrobe, or suddenly realize that I can see an alternate reality. Why can’t that happen to me? And maybe it has for someone else, but just no one has told me. Maybe people are having these amazing adventures all the time and keeping it a secret.

This might be why I like YA novels even though I am no longer an angsty teenager. I think I read them more now as an adult anyway. Or maybe I am just getting old and nostalgic, but the idea that things feel more intensity in those first experiences is something I miss. And although I would never want to go back and relive that rollercoaster, I do like reading about them.