My Playground

I used to work at Barnes and Noble (similar to Chapters in Canada).  It was one of my first jobs.  I have fond memories of working there. Mostly because I was surrounded by books.  I love books.  I love to see the spines poking out with their different colours, fonts and enticing titles.  I would roam up and down, back and forth brushing my hand against the books. Pulling out those that looked promising.  I would open the book right in the middle and jump into the storyline.  A good story is hard to beat. Even harder to beat, are the magic of words brilliantly put together.  Something happens as I step into a writer's world and have the privilege of enjoying the labour of their creativity. I feel as if I know the writer just a tad because I am given a sense of who they are by marveling at their word usage.  I equate it to second hand clothes shopping.  Hunting in store after store, rummaging through rack after rack for that one, fantastic find.   In language, there's this life-size box of words all waiting inside.  The best are hidden at the bottom, dusty and rarely used (maybe even for centuries).  Writers are those individuals who are eccentrically excited to throw their whole self inside the box to wade all the way to the bottom of the box to find that one, inexplicably beautiful word. They will create a sentence just to make the word fit. 

Let me introduce you to three of my all time beloved authors and show you why they are genius (each in their own, unique style).

Take, for instance, this:  
"From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built to immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I feft that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."  (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice).  Most of us know and recognize these words instantly.  Austen (one of my literary heroins) has breathtaking wordsmith capabilities.  

Or perhaps you'll recognize this author for his unmistakable frankness and exciting imagination:
He took a long drink and then (I know this sounds shocking, but it isn't if you think it over) he ate nearly all the dead dragon. He was half-way through it before he realized what he was doing; for, you see, though his mind was the mind of Eustace, he tastes and his digestion were dragonish.  And there is nothing a dragon likes so well as fresh dragon. That is why you seldom find more than one dragon in the same country. (CS Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader).

And maybe less universally known but still an absolute joy to read, James Herriot, the British Veterinarian (excerpt from The Best of James Herriot ). 
"What's the trouble?" I asked.  
I heard a muttered consultation at the far end. 
"He says its leg's gone funny." 
"Funny? What d'you mean, funny?"
Again the quick babble of voices. "He says its kind of stickin' out." 
"All right", I said, "I'll be along very soon." 
It was no good asking for the dog to be brought in.   Arnold had never owned a car.  Nor had he ever spoken on a telephone - all our conversations had been carried on through the medium of Miss Thompson.  Arnold would mount his rusty bicycle, pedal to Hainby and tell his troubles to the postmistress.  And the symptoms; they were typically vague and I didn't suppose there would be anything either "funny" or "sticking out" about that leg when I saw it.


I've never enjoyed libraries.  The academia atmosphere with the old school Dewey Decimal system is a quick kill on the creative mind.  However, wandering into a bookstore, meandering through the aisles, handling the books with tender care, peeking into the chapters to marvel at the language is a place of inspiration to me.  I don't buy many books (unfortunately, books are too large, heavy and cumbersome to keep for a vagabond traveler like myself), but I surely can eat up pages.  I have a favourite site in Carleton Place called "Reads Bookshop" that also houses coffee. Not much in life is better than books mingled in with coffee.  The over-stuffed chair, a piping hot mug in hand, and books piled within arm's reach to muse over is a beautiful thing.  I thank God that He gave the mind a sport so wickedly fun to relish in.  Words are a wonderful, wonderful thing...