My former student and friend Sneha is a college student who take a paperback novel with her everywhere she goes. When she has down time between classes, she reads. When she is hanging out with her friends doing nothing in particular, she reads. When a professor’s lecture drags into terminal boredom, she reads (presumably in the back of a lecture hall where she cannot be seen ☺). When she is sitting at a red light, out comes the book!

I mention this because Sneha reminds me a lot of myself. My entire life I have rarely been without a book. Whenever I am the passenger in a car, I read. When I am waiting for a meeting to begin, I read. I read at sporting events and waiting for a movie or a high school graduation to begin. I attended dozens of high school sporting events when Andy and Mark participated, and I was never without a book (although, admittedly, I spent as much time grading tests at those events as I did reading).

I attended science fiction worldcons regularly in the 1970s, and although I tried talking with the other attendees, I was a total failure at socializing with strangers, even when they shared the same love of science fiction that I did. So when my frustration level threatened to boil over in despair, I retreated into my books.

My reading differs from Sneha’s only in particulars. She prefers historical romance; I prefer science fiction. But we both have the same passion for characters in exotic settings, worlds which differ from our own, and a joy at flying away at least temporarily from the world in which we live. I cannot imagine living without books, and it is good to have a few close friends who feel the same way I do.

Nor is it surprising Sneha and I became friends, considering how our passion for books is only one of several similarities we share. Now if we can just get our heads out of those darned books once in awhile we would actually have a chance to chat a bit. (j/k).