Furthermore! Bookies Unite.

I'm reading more now. I met with a reader a week or two ago for drinks and admitted, rather ashamedly, that I don't read much these days.

He said, "A writer ought to read."

I retorted, "One would surmise so."

So, I am. Since, I've read The Professor and the Madman, since it's about a love for words, which I surely have, though, not to the capacity as someone like the x-Guy, who's a Scrabble dork, but whatever. I do love learning new words. I was titillated to learn of imbroglio last week, for instance, and made Scrabble note of "zyxt," the last word of the OED.

This morning I've read the paper and have now begun a book that has languished on my shelves for six years -- James Ellroys' My Dark Places. He's the author who penned LA Confidential. It's the account of how, in his 40s (I think), he finally went to LA to try and get to the bottom of who murdered his mother when he was 10 years old, a murder he was always left to believe was a result of her having loose morals, which I believe is to turn out to not be the case.

I must continue reading. Anything, everything, all things. Reading is what expands us as writers; we see new techniques, new styles, new words, new phrasings, and it's inspirational. It truly is. I've had a hard time reading in the years since my mother's death, for some reason, so it's nice to have read three books in the last two months, though there was a time when I would have read three books in two weeks, if not within a week.

This book has me pondering a figment I once churned in the vat of my mind: Undertaking a trip to Prince Edward Island to investigate the early life of my mother. A gathering of her. She was quite the woman, and I wish I better knew her origins. I should write about her a bit more over the next couple weeks, I think, in more tangible ways and not just this woe-is-me, wah-wah, deadie-mom bullshit whiner stuff I conjure. (Okay, I'm not that bad, but...)

Anyhow: I love a book that has me ponderous within a chapter. Always a sign of goodness to come. I am to become a reader again. A writer who reads. A writer who wants to grow. This is a good turn of events, and a goal worth striving for.