The rain, the cats, and a good book

I wish that I could stay at home today and read my book. It is just that kind of day already. What I'm reading, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, I've read before, but it is so lovely to come back to it and find the pages so filled with colour and know that it has just been sitting there on the bookshelf in DN1's room waiting for me to rediscover it. And that is the funny thing about books. Some books you only need to read once in your lifetime and they stay with you forever. Certain points in the plot may become lost to you, but you remember forever the feeling you're left with, and that is that you've been given a treasure. This is how it is for me as I am reading Mrs. Dalloway.

So truth be told, I would rather stay at home today and read my book, but I can't. And since one is not allowed to make wishes with qualifications I must put my book down. This is difficult, yet rather easy, because with Virginia Woolf you can't just dip your toe in and grab five minutes of reading. No, you need to become totally submerged and let the waves of her writing take control of you and allow yourself to float along and relish her prose.

I know Benno and Simone would be happy if I stayed home too, since they are obviously ready to curl up and cuddle with someone who would rather be reading. I tried to explain to DH the other day about being caught up in a good book and wanting so badly to do nothing but read and he said that he has never experienced that. I can recall sitting in school, and this is going way back, and having to sit in class for 50 minutes with that book sitting in front of me on my desk and being so aggravated that I just couldn't leave and indulge myself in something I would much rather be doing. I just finished Jane Eyre, which, quelle horreur, I have never read before! But it was lovely, and something I wish that I had discovered when I was fourteen years old. Now as I looked to find a book to write about for my class, I had considered Jane Austen but as I have stated before I'm not a huge Austen fan. Instead on my way in to work, and fueled by the Indigo Girls who share as much of a passion for Virginia Woolf's work as I do, I decided, why do a book I don't like, I need to write about Clarissa Dalloway.

And now I'm back to that feeling again, the one where you want to drop everything, turn off the lights, listen to the sound of the rain and the purring of the cats and get wrapped up in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares for a party.