Reading a book

I have spent the whole of Sunday lying on the sofa reading a book. Now this may seem trivial to you, but it has been a very long time since the last time I've done this without being on holiday, in my precious 20 days a year holiday. I was lucky enough to find a book that was that engrossing, captivating and funny and deep at the same time. It was a perfect Sunday: sunny outside, my flowers in bloom on the window-sill, orchids and geraniums, great music on last.fm online radio, and me devouring this book and laughing out loud.

I had forgotten the feeling of wanting to get to the end of a novel as soon as possible, to find out what happens to the characters, and if they all come out fine in the end. I had forgotten the rush to turn the pages to see what happens next, the bitter fear that they are turning too fast and this rollercoaster ride will be over soon, and the satisfaction of knowing the denoument, accompanied by the sadness of saying goodbye to those characters that have become, for this weekend, my family.

OK, I'll tell you: the book was Marina Lewycka's 'We Are All Made of Glue'.

I remember this feeling of relishing a book since my teenage years. I remember the luxury of a few free hours, with absolutely nothing better to do, or guiltily stolen from things like learning by rote a history lesson, which I avoided like the plague, or vacuum cleaning as a grown-up, which I now avoid with the same gusto. Somehow, deep in my heart I would never feel that reading a good book like this is a waste of time, unlike watching movies, which, however great or famous, still leave me with a lingering feeling of "What have I been doing with my time?".

There is something about a good book that completely and deeply satisfies my craving for using my time well, almost like a good talk with a clever and funny, stimulating friend. There's something very deep in a good book, a close intimacy with the mind of someone else, the author, who wanted to take you on a journey, to tell you things that she has been pondering, or that made her laugh, or that she simply observed in daily life. It's the solitary talk of someone that reaches someone else in their solitude, and somehow fills this solitude with a fascinating conversation. Informative, mundane, descriptive, funny, or fast, every passage just takes you into the world of someone else who wanted to share it with you. And it doesn't have to be all very clever or deep, indeed it's not and probably it can't all be so, otherwise it would turn into some heavy philosophical treatise. The simple pieces that tell you how they went shopping, had a coffee with a friend, saw someone else or a group of people having a barbeque, those pieces give you the satisfaction of a glimpse into someone else's world, a surrogate friend or a mock party.

The feeling of watching through someone else's eyes, reading their reaction in their words, their compassion, their sensations, the smell of places, this adds up to something that completely fills my awareness. And their deep pondering of life, alternating with brief and sharp observations of it, sometimes with a running commentary of their mental voice, makes it so close to my experience of life. Somehow this just becomes so cosy, as if someone else understands me, I am no longer alone, someone cares and has been through sensations and feelings and thoughts that I have also been through. Or has been through others, unknown to me, but cares enough to share them all with me, and considers me that important as to tell them to me. I am a worthy confidente, worthy to be told all this.

Maybe I am sad, maybe I lack gossiping, maybe I live too alone and I talk too little during my daily routine. Maybe old women who live in villages and meet every day and spend their life chatting have this satisfaction often, but I don't, and this kind of reading gives it to me. Maybe it's just a basic need to gossip that somehow my urban life has narrowed down to a need to read. But God, it's so great to have it!