The Letter B

B

Bookworm

WiseGEEK.com

“The usage of bookworm actually goes back as early as 1599, people were referring to book lovers as bookworms. The term was only applied to insects in the 1800s. Some people prefer to distinguish bookworms from bibliophiles, arguing that bookworms love books for their contents, while bibliophiles love books as objects. Clearly, some overlap probably exists between the two, as plenty of bookworms collect old or beautiful books, and many bibliophiles greatly enjoy reading. Different people have different standards about bookworms, often determined by their own reading habits. The term is often applied to children, especially shy children who spend much of their spare time reading. Adults, however, can certainly be bookworms as well, especially when they have a great deal of spare time on their hands. If you cannot leave the house without a book, you might be a bookworm. This is especially true if you pop the book open at every opportunity, or if you have been known to read while walking down the street, cooking, or performing similar tasks.”

Ok, I’ll confess, I’m a book worm. I’ll read for hours on end if the subject appeals to me. I have a wide range of reading interests, from biographies to romance to suspense, murder mysteries, dramas and even horror/thriller books. I have been known to be standing at the stove, stirring a pot with one hand while my other hand is holding a book as my eyes flicker back and forth from the stove to the words in the book. I have travelled to places like Paris, China and Africa to name just a few. I’ve sailed the mighty seas and even lived on mountains, in the desert and even wandered the great plains of America and Canada. My other half is getting tired of building shelves for my collection and as you read this I still have a box full of books that still need to be displayed. I’m not able to part with them since they have been my means of travel and excitement for years.

I can remember as a child lying out on the lawn of the backyard during summer reading different books. While my siblings were enjoying their summer, I was engrossed in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and believe it or not the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. As I grew older of course my likes evolved and in came the romance. I can thank my mother for that once since I used to read her Harlequin romance novels until I figured out that the stories were all the same just different names and different places. Man meets woman, woman and man think they hate each other, man and woman hide the fact they fell in love “somehow” and then finally admit to loving each other and live happily ever after…..The End. Thankfully that phase didn’t last to terribly long. When I am totally engrossed in a book, it’s like I lose all sense of time. It’s weird but I become the main character. I feel their pain, their joy and even their terror.

“A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.”

Charles de Montesquieu