Readers Gather

"Date a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn....
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 am clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are...
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads." -Rosemarie Urquico (NOT Robert Pattinson)
Those are only small parts of this long quote from Rosemarie about why you should date a girl who reads. And it is 100% accurate! We are a small group that few appreciate. I thought, in this entry, I would talk about why I love reading and what it means to me.
When I was really little, like second grade I think, I actually hated reading. I wasn't good at understanding what I read and it frustrated me. Then I had to take a class that was designed to help kids learn reading comprehension. We used to have to read so many books a year and report back to the teacher. I will always be grateful to Mrs. Menage for teaching me to love reading. In one year I went from avoiding books and hating reading to leaving the library with stacks of books. As a matter of fact, I used to have piles of books and the minute I finished one book, I would shove my nose into a new book. Growing up, reading became an outlet to escape my problems. Don't get me wrong, I didn't really have that bad of a life but with parents that weren't together and a very strict set of parents, my angsty self thought that I had it BAD. I turned to reading when I was bored and as a distraction. I remember I used to love to bring a book out and read on my tummy in my grandmas yard during the summer.
Since then, I've changed from gooey romance novels to dark mystery novels. I'm not entirely sure how many books I've read in my life but I know it is quite a bit. I have quite a collection of my "babies" and you know I truly like you if I let you borrow one of them. I'm incredibly protective of my books and will read the riot act to whomever does get to borrow them.
Growing up, there were only a couple adults in my life that read and encouraged me to keep reading. My grandma read, I do know that. But she mostly read dirty romance novels. I also remember my mom definitely encouraging me to keep reading, she always thought it was cute that I was her reader. My older sister and I were the only ones growing up that were avid readers. Every reader knows that there are the actual readers and there are people that want to be readers. The actual readers are the people that always have a stack or a list of books on deck to read. The others claim they love to read but maybe pick up one book a year.
When I met my ex's mom, I discovered another person that soaks up books like water. Every time I saw her, we would small talk for just a minute and then immediately tell each other about the current book that we were on. It's very rare to find a person that can share that passion with you. That was one of the biggest reason I fell in love with her! Unfortunately when she passed, I realized that I lost that and I might never have that again. However, I recently met my dude's grandparents and found out that his grandpa is also an avid reader. As a matter of fact, he sent me home with three of his books to read!