I love books, words, language – all of it. When I graduated high school and had to decide what I wanted to major in in college, all I knew was that I enjoyed English classes, and I was good at them, and I felt like they made my world better. So, I declared myself an English major, later added a linguistics minor, and dealt with four years of “So are you gonna teach or write?” and “Linguistics? How many languages can you speak?” My answers to these varied depended on who asked me and how I was feeling that day. If it was someone around my age, I would usually explain that I don’t have the patience for kids, and that linguistics is more about the study of the structure of language and it’s every day rather than translating or understanding the content of every language. If it was someone older, like a family member or a random stranger that asked if I went to the local university I would usually try to politely explain how broad the skills one acquires with an English degree are and how many different directions one could go with it – I’d list the critical thinking and the ability to communicate thoughts into words first and then follow up with a list of English majors I know that work for law offices or went into advertising and marketing.
In general, the necessity of justifying an English degree is irritating, but usually it just takes a little effort to explain why you wanted to spend 4 years of your life reading classic novels and writing papers. Those that share a love of reading, words, and language understand the soul nourishing love for all things book related. Just walking into a room filled with books is enough to induce an overall feeling of “as long as there are more books to read, everything will be okay”. There will always be a never-ending list of “books to read” in my notepad or on pieces of notebook paper scattered all around, and there are few things as satisfying as finishing another book so you can move on to the next.
So, to wrap up this ramble about books I’m gonna get to the point of it all which is that I’d like to start a little series on this blog about books I’m either currently reading or looking forward to in the near future! I may even start a YouTube channel that focusing on books/lifestyle/a little beauty/whatever I want, but I’ll keep you posted on that.
For now, I just finished reading one of Charles Bukowski’s books of poetry, Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way, and I’m currently working on Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing, alongside James Joyce’s Dubliners, and Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle.
I like to have more than one book going at once usually so I have options – different genres for different moods.
A new post will be up next week about each of these books (hopefully this will give me the motivation I need to finish them!)
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
-K
thelavenderhours 