Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Words to make you smile to bursting


“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but...she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.



Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.



You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

-- Rosemary Urquico

via A New Beginning

9 comments:

Alexa said...

I actually started crying at the end of this post.

Unknown said...

I was just clicking through 'next blog', 'next blog', and rhe first sentence got me, being a girl who reads and writes herself.
And yes, it did make me smile to bursting.

Dreamcatcher said...

i love this post! thanks!

Weena said...

I absolutely adore this. I smiled to bursting too.

lizamaria said...

this is so inspirational!

Anonymous said...

I've been blogging since November and have yet to leave a comment on someone else's blog. Thank you for giving me a reason too.

beth larson said...

amen. i am all those things you describe...no day is complete for me until i have read myself to sleep. that poem about how life is too short to read all the books we want to read blah, blah, blah...is exactly how i feel. when i was in 2nd grade, (i'm 52) i used to pass by the big old public library on my walk home from school. my mom was dying and thus not exactly taking her children on outings...but i remember daydreaming that if i could just get my own library card and go in there, my life wouldn't be so bad. books have consoled me, comforted me, entertained me, challenged me-and let me know worlds i will only dream of. your post was remarkable~

Unknown said...

I love this post. Thank you. I hope to find someone someday who has absorbed these wise thoughts on girls who read (and write.)
KK

Kitty Cat said...

thanks to miss Kate for directing this librarian's daughter to this post--
viva la book!