Word Play #2: Rather Bookish

The words in red are those which were suggested as part of my Word Play game. Thanks to my niece (a fellow bookworm) for suggesting this group of words.  

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As a family we are all rather bookish. DH and I have always been this way, and our mutual love of books is one of the many things which brought us together in the first place.  I can remember many a date when we wandered through a town, happened to find ourselves in a bookshop, and then emerged blinking into the bright light an hour or two later and a hundred or so dollars poorer. Our mutual love of the printed word means that when we've sat down and played the, "If we won a billion dollars and got to build our dream home" game, one of the very first items on the list is a library with shelves reaching so high you need one of those ladders on wheels in order to reach the shelves above your head. One of the other items is a toilet which is not always cold, but that's a story for another day.

So....books. I love them with the same ferocity I reserve for my children. I am however both cheap and rather space-conscious, so many years ago I got into libraries in a pretty big way. Actually my first real foray into libraries was when I was pregnant with the kids. I'd gone on maternity leave a few weeks earlier than most, and I found myself able bodied and bored out of my mind. My solution to this was to go to the local library, gather up armfuls of books (always in an even number, I'm a little OCD like that) and drag them home. I say "drag" because it was never clear which was heavier - the bag of books, or my heavily pregnant-with-triplets belly. Since then I've been very pro-library and the rest of my family is, too - we've 'maxed out' our collective library cards on more than one occasion (and one card = 25 books.)

Sometimes, it's not just about the books themselves, it's about the entire experience. So once I bring the books home, I have an entire procedure for working out the order in which I'm going to read them, a bit like the MnM's sorting procedure I do. I get engrossed in my little procedure and next thing you know, I've glanced down at my watch and realised a half hour has gone by. I can get entirely lost in my world of books - so much so I'd hardly notice if there was an Apocalypse or a whole V-formation of flying squirrels passed by the window. It's entirely indulgent...and I love it unashamedly.

I'll let you in on a few secrets, though: I rarely read anything heavily emotional or intellectual, instead preferring to read those things which require nearly no thought at all. The only time I ever read anything with any real 'grunt' to it is when it's been recommended by someone (often, my niece, who lives oceans away) or when a book has gotten enough press that I need to see what all the fuss is about. For me, reading is all about escapism. To use a cliche, reading is my happy place. It's the thing I do when I really want to just turn my brain off and stop all the infernal thinking that I do. I can be totally immersed in a book, get to the end of it, and be totally unable to tell you what the book was about. If there are more than a half dozen characters, I won't be able to keep them straight in my head. So I'm reading, but because I'm really only in a vaguely conscience state to begin with, I'm not really absorbing much of it at all.  I suppose in that way it's my own form of meditation (without the palaver of the oom's and the burning candles and whatnot.)

Is there something YOU do which is your happy place? Sew? Knit? Cook? Garden? Where do you get lost? What is the one activity which totally immerses you in it, to the exclusion of all else? (Immerses you enough that you wouldn't notice a flock of owls that landed on your window sill and ask you directions to Hogwart's...)