hello, i'm satan, and i'd like to talk to you about reading for pleasure. why don't you do it more often? college/high school/daily life getting in the way? perhaps you think you don't have time for such leisure activities. make time. you will be rewarded. take howl's moving castle for instance. the movie is actually based on a book by the same name, and so i went to the library, and there it was. that was ... this past weekend? then i started reading the book yesterday afternoon. or maybe monday, i really can't remember. anyway, i finished it last night, reading the latter two thirds of the book all in one sitting. that's right, because that's how much that book rocks. howl is hysterical. i don't wanna give anything away, but there's a world w/in a world here, and i really never thought that i would look at wales as some foreign mysterious country with strange moving picture boxes, but there i was freaking out over wales. those of you who have read it will know what i mean. those of you who haven't, well what the heck are you waiting for? go out and read it! it'll be in the teen or young adult section, but i got news for you, a lot of those books are Really Good. who here has read The Giver by lois lowry? wasn't it awesome? i was like a dozen pages from the end of that book before i realized that none of them could see in color. that is another Incredible Book. the other book i'm here to reccommend to you is To Reign in Hell by The Steven Brust. i swear i would have that man's babies if he asked. the problem w/ that book is that it's too good. i can't read that much of it before i'm grinning and giggling too much to continue. and i have to put it down. and then i get distracted. wash, rinse, repeat. it's his take on Paradise Lost by john milton. it is Incredible. not to be believed. the other book of brust's that i really enjoy, in fact maybe even a little more than to reign in hell, is called The Sun, The Stars, and the Moon. ...or something like that. it's about this painter, and all the issues he goes through as the studio that he's started w/ his friends begins to fail. brust says it's his musings on his own craft. i read that book thinking, oh my god, that's me. and that's me too. and so's that. jesus. that book was really good. and the main character was just like somebody i would meet at college. he was ... well, i don't wanna say he was so real, coz that a) is dumb and b) doesn't mean anything. he was believable. he felt to me like a person who was entirely plausible in this world. unlike my beloved fantasy, where a lot of the people are sort of... too brave to be realistic, this guy -i'm sorry i just can't remember his name- felt like if i met him, i could be friends w/ him. a little egotistical, a little elitist about his art, i guess, but i'm inclined to believe that all artists are at least a tad elitist about their art.

anyhow, it's just that i'm still on a high from last night's pleasures of the book, and i wanted to share.

READING ROCKS!!!