Author: Ruth Arnell

My niece posed a very difficult question last week, one to which I still have not developed a satisfactory answer. She was watching the Harry Potter marathon on TV and asked:

What series would you like to read again for the first time, if you could have your memory erased so you could discover it all over again?

I’ve been thinking about this for a week and still haven’t come up with an answer. I have books that I love to reread because they are familiar and comfortable, and it’s like visiting with an old friend.

Recently I’ve read or heard several conversations about reading styles – whether you read one book at a time, or several.  Our own Amanda is a professed advocate of book monogamy, but that just seems strange to me.  This last weekend, I put my son to bed on Friday night, and when I went to go settle down on the couch, I realized that I had left my book at work.  What is a book monogamist going to do in that situation?  Watch bad TV?  Surf the internet?  But luckily, I am a polylibrous (I totally just made that up –

Last week I got an email from my sister with the subject line “DNF without opening the book?” and the entire body of the message was this:

The Serpent M’gulfn has been destroyed, its dark reign ended – but its death has unleashed dangerous energies that threaten the Earth of Three Planes anew. Journeying to Gorethria comes Melkavesh, daughter of Ashurek, determined to harness the new potential of sorcery for good. It seems she is too late, for a ruthless usurper, Duke Xaedrek, has already seized power. Aided by a demon with malign ambitions of its own,

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed here in the states (for those of you who are in the states), but there’s this thing going on called the World Cup, which is basically just a month long journey of concentrated awesomeness. I’ve been watching the World Cup, and after straining my throat yelling at the game this morning, from my nice office on an entirely separate continent and hemisphere from the actual action, I wondered why my emotional involvement in this distant event was considered normal. There were so many people watching the game at work today that the walls actually shook from the screaming and jumping up and down when Landon Donovan scored his goal in stoppage time.