Lost in a Book

Megs and I matched today.

Over the past 48 hours, I spent 16 hours at the office listening to The Fellowship of the Ring. Three of the 16 disks remain. Neither Katherine nor I have ever completed The Fellowship of the Ring, though both of us have attempted numerous times. By four o'clock tomorrow, I will be able to say I have read Tolkien's stunning trilogy. Embarrassingly, I struggled to fight back tears while typing "Earnest Oldman" into the 6 AM Tundra Wilderness Tour as Frodo grieved, "I wish it need not have happened in my time."

"Can you imagine?!" I exclaimed to my coworkers when Frodo offered to bear the ring to its destruction, and probably his own.
Foolish, Emily (I chided myself). This isn't real, remember?

A well written book coupled with uninterrupted time leaves me lost in the crafted world. Sometimes hours pass before I rouse myself and realize I have been staring at pages and letters, not sitting under a tree laughing at Gulliver as he passed by, trotting in poor imitation of the Houyhnhnm beside him.
Other books that have stolen my mind this summer…

Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Hemingway's A Moveable Feast
Swift's Gulliver's Travels


Current selections: Fellowship of the Ring and Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
Next on the list: The Hobbit on CD and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby