Books

This thing called "books" have been haunting me for the last three years. The idea that graduate students and books go hand in hand is something exciting and yet daunting at the same time. Of course, it's because since I was at my elementary education, the motto I have been practicing is a well-known one among students: The more you read the more you forget, the less you read the less you forget. You read nothing? Of course, you forget nothing :)

Now, I read more than twenty books and probably nearly a hundred articles in a semester, all for classes. This being said, I thought I was a bit far from the idea of reading for pleasure. The last time I read for fun was about six months ago, "devouring" three books from Andrea Hirata and a couple from Paulo Coelho. I sometimes wished I would have gone to bed more with Dee's or Hilman's (does he still write books?)on my hands instead of Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind or Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality.

But something has been going on lately that would probably (and hopefully) change the way I view readings: I have a friend who reads. Her name is Rae. She reads, and reads, and reads. She reads Mary Catherine Bateson, Margaret Mead, Michel Foucault (of course), and many other academic "stuff". She is contagious, I must say. She gives to me the love of reading. The love of reading "quality" stuff. By quality I mean books that make her think. and think. and think. Books that make her mind play, rebel, submit, study, question, and love. Books that make her share concerns, knowledge, criticisms, joy. Thankfully, she is willing to share those with me.

Reading, in the end, is not only about a relationship between me and the dead, passive, good-to-use-as-a-pillow thing called a book. Reading, when shared, becomes all about relationship. And relationship is what matters. It's the relationship between human and ideas, between human and nature, nature and ideas, but most of all, it's the relationships with fellow human beings.


For RMB. Happy reading, and don't forget our thesis draft on Monday.lol

And for my blog cheerleaders, I read you.