Friday, July 27, 2012

As a writer, I’m a voracious reader.   I suppose the two go hand-in-hand.  Least they do for me.  I consume at least 1600 pages of text per month and love discovering new authors.  Though they may not be new to the writing world, the books I find and read are new to me.  I devour many with an insatiable appetite, as if their very words are the nutrients I need to sustain my body.  Well…if not my body, then certainly my mind.

Every once in a while, I come across an author’s works that ignite my prodigious thirst for reading.  Faster and faster my eyes fly over their words.  Pages get gobbled up.  My mind races with the possibilities of what will come next.  What gem of writing skill I’ll stumble upon.  And yet, through it all, time seems to slow, or rather, it seems to not exist at all, me having fallen into an alternate universe where neither time nor space matter.  Where the only significance is the way the author orders his/her words.  How the plot twists.  The eloquence with which the author paints the pages with their words, each leaving an indelible mark on my psyche. 

I’m currently reading just such a book.  By just such an author.  It’s called The Shadow of the Wind, written by Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  I couldn’t begin to tell you how the book’s storyline will end.  Or what next great find the characters will discover.  But what I can reveal is that reading Carlos’s words—each and every one of them—is like diving into a pool of delectable delights where my entire being is bathed in a wash of eloquently sequenced words whose portrayed visual images allow me to drift to places only one’s creative mind can reach.

Carlos’ style of writing, least in this book, is an intoxicating cocktail of a theatre narrator, someone telling their life story as well as a novelist spinning a hopelessly addictive piece of fiction.  Though my time for reading is sparse right now, I thrill over my opportunities to devour yet another of his chapters.  Each one, as corny as it may sound, equates to my taking a vacation…a beautiful never-want-it-to-end holiday that revitalizes and inspires me.

Rare finds such as this author and his story are amongst the sparks that kindle the embers for my own writing.  And so, I’ll continue reading as much and as often as time allows, for doing so provides a beautiful plate glass window through which I’m able to view the world of possibilities.