R is for...

...Reading.

No, not the city in the UK, although I spent many weeks there as an Instructor. Nor in Northern California, either. Never been there.

The act of reading, books, the backs of cereal boxes, any series of words that fall into my line of (now somewhat augmented by correcting lenses) sight. I have said, often, that I will read pretty much anything that comes between book coves. I should also add to that, pretty much anything that has come on one or other of the half-dozen eReaders I've owned and used over the years.

Poetry, nonsense rhymes, short stories, novellas, great (in all senses of the word) Russian novels - and just about all genres, from pure (or otherwise!) Romance, through Young Adult, to hard-code hard Science Fiction - and all points in between.

Stories. Plain and simple. Or lush and complex, for that matter.

I read to enjoy, to get lost in the story, to inhabit the world built up in the collaboration between writer and reader. And, in recent years, I find I also read to learn, to watch the creator at work, to peek at the mechanics going on between, beneath the words.

But I still get lost in the story. As I should.

And then there's poetry - but we already know what I think about that. "P" was dedicated to a small "show and tell" on that topic - where the showing was done by the great Ms. Dickinson herself.

So, reading. It's good for what ails ya.

And, right now, I'm reading a Kurt Wallandar story by Henning Mankell. And lost in the story I am.