you've lost interest, haven't you.

An open letter to the four people who read this stupid blog...

Dear Comrades,

Sorry for never updating. I have a sinking feeling you totally don't care but that's okay, I'm still sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I have been working hard to become a better reader and I even attended a professional development workshop to help me be a more knowledgeable recommender of romance books. It was one of those scenarios in which you wonder how you ended up in the spot that you are in, carefully writing notes about which time travel love stories are the best.

ANYWAY, the one thing the facilitator said that really made me think was that everyone has a sort of finger-snapping moment with reading, a book they read when they're little that is so good that it shapes the rest of their reading life. I pathetically realized that for me, this would have to be either The Babysitters Club series (as evidenced in a previous entry), or the books of Beverly Cleary, especially Ramona. Seriously. The Ramona books are all about love in the face of mundane disasters like parental unemployment and breaking an egg on your head and fighting with your siblings and being a misunderstood 8-year-old kid who loves to play with tin can stilts. I defy you to find more universal literary themes than those. Mostly though, the Ramona books are about family, and as Tara will confirm, I love things about families, from Seventh Heaven (a never ending font of sensible wisdom, although the new season kind of sucks. and no, I'm not afraid to admit I watch it.) to Beezus and Ramona to all those amazing books by Carol Shields and Anne Tyler (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant will always be in my top five) and Bonnie Burnard. I feel cozy just thinking about them.

And now I'm being pulled from my cozy feeling by a library full of rowdy teens. Dear kids, please stop playing violent YouTube clips on your speaker-enhanced cell phones and sit quietly with a copy of The Amber Spyglass or something.

Okay! In the interests of interactivity, tell me about your own "YES GUY!" reading moments!

I love you all.