I was excited, delighted and totally jazzed to read that the first Saturday in November  is declared Book Lovers Day. I was nurtured on nouns, weaned on words, swaddled in synoyms, well versed in verbs and bathed in books…metaphorically speaking, of course. Books have  been my companions, doorways into other worlds, soporific when I can’t sleep, enlightenment and entertainment always. I have more books than any other type of item in my home. Simply stated…I LOVE BOOKS. Could be why I became a writer. People

Dr. Seuss was one of my first ‘gurus’  who really did teach me ‘gee  you are you’ with his rollicking rhyme scheme and sometimes otherworldly wisdom. ‘Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  and “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”  My son’s favorite bedtime story was The Cat In The Hat, long beyond childhood…mine too.  Oh The Places You’ll Go  and The Lorax are two of my favorite Seussian social consciousness volumes.

My reading list has always had a rather spiritual bent, enthralled with  The Search For Bridey Murphy written by Morey Bernstein,  in junior high school that introduced me to past lives and reincarnation. Many years later I interviewed Dr. Brian Weiss, an expert in the field after his book Many Lives, Many Masters came out.  Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, opened the door to the idea that we are each an aspect of Divinity with it’s ‘thou art God’ greeting and the use of the word ‘grok’ which meant (in the Martian language in the book) to ‘drink’, as in to be so intimately connected that it is as if you are drinking that person in and becoming one with them.  Illusions by Richard Bach and Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman were pivotal reads in my early adulthood as they helped me to recognize the power of my thoughts, echoed years later in the book and movie The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.  The Mists of Avalon; a voluminous book penned by Marion Zimmer Bradley, beckoned me into the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the women in the story, as they honored the Goddess.   The Red Book by Sera Beak, Pronoia by Rob Breszny and all of SARK’s books twirl me around their little fingers with luscious laughter.

These days, much of my reading is both entertainment and work related, since I do book reviews. What joy to integrate those two worlds!

From The Literacy Company, Some sad stats

• 46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine.
• It is estimated that as many as 15 percent of American students may be dyslexic.
• 50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book.
• There are almost half a million words in our English Language – the largest language on earth, incidentally – but a third of all our writing is made up of only twenty-two words.
• In a class of 20 students, few if any teachers can find even 5 minutes of time in a day to devote to reading with each student.
• Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year.
• The average reader spends about 1/6th of the time they spend reading actually rereading words.
• When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade.

• 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

 If you have children in your life, encourage them to read, by reading to them and having them read to you. People who read have more extensive vocabularies, are more confident communicators and are taken more seriously by potential employers. They also become more out of the box thinkers. Reason enough? 

So, as Book Lovers Day approaches, I encourage you to curl up with a good book and enrich your heart, mind and soul.

http://youtu.be/c6j8EiWIVZs  Reading Rainbow theme <3