second hand excitement

Today I convinced myself that going to the bookshop was totally okay because I hadn't bought my brother's birthday present yet. (I picked his book from the pool of books that I wanted to read because the Best Sister Award is just not big enough to express the level of awesome sisterness that I am at.) I bought his gift in ten minutes. I stayed in the bookshop until it closed. 

As exciting as this tale is, I did not intend to write about how I found myself in the bookshop nor how incredible a sister I am. While I was trailing my finger down the spines of endless books and wondering if having watched Prison Break meant that I had a chance of successfully undertaking a bookshop robbery, I received a text from my friend (Lucy, in case you were wondering) saying that she was back into reading. In my personal statement I had referred to the quote 'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once.' and she continued to text that after reading this she too wanted to live many lives. That's pretty cool I think. I smiled a lot and it made me happy that she wanted to read more because goodness, how wonderful is reading? How completely and utterly squee-inducing is reading a book where you fall in love with the characters or reading a book where the characters fall in love? How wholly frustrating and thrilling and engrossing is reading mysteries and thrillers? 

Sometimes I think about how many books there are in the world that I won't be able to read and it's a little sad to think that there are potential favourites and life changers that I won't experience. It's a lot like everything else in life, really, and while I can accept that there are way too many books to read them all, not reading is something I can't really wrap my head around. It's this thought, how wonderfully inspiring or funny or lovely or sad or terrifyingly true books can be that makes me so happy that my friend is back into reading. I like the idea that she'll find a line or a handful of words in a novel that sticks with her or comes back to her at a later date. 

I am excited for her. This is my second hand excitement. 

After about half an hour I realised that we had texted about reading while I was in a bookshop so I decided to tell her that and it turned out that she had been upstairs of the same bookshop while I had been downstairs. 

I'm telling you, it's the power of books that makes the world freaking magical. 

All my love, Sadia x