One Perfect Moment {Book Worm} | Life

One Perfect Moment is all about those moments, big or small, that make you wish they'd last forever. Those moments you want to stop in time, when everything feels perfect, even for just a split-second. Snapshots of the mind. Moments to treasure forever.

It's no secret that I love to read. LOVE it! I've loved it from a very early age, as long as I can remember. When I was younger I would read anything I could get my hands on. New books did not last long, as I would retreat to my room or my favourite seat in the loungeroom, devouring the pages and the stories they held.

Mum would take me shopping for books in the lead-up to my birthday. We would spend hours in the local bookstore or at the Christian bookstore Koorong, wandering the aisles, talking about what books looked good, if the latest instalment of our favourite series had come out yet, speculating on whether or not the cover would do the story justice. I learnt early on never to judge a book by it's cover.

Once the birthday books had been selected, usually around a dozen, Mum would take them home and hide them, lest I start reading straight away. Come my birthday I would be presented with this pile of wrapped books. After the unwrapping I had a decision to make. Which two books would I start with? Because my birthday fell just before the winter school holidays I would be under strict instructions to pace myself, so that I would have some new books left to read in the holidays.

It got to the point however, where Mum would have to take back the books she'd given me in an effort to try and slow me down. She would keep them in her room and dole them out to me one at a time, urging me to savour the stories and take my time.

I tried. I really did. But I was a fast reader, and more often than not that pile of new books would be well and truly finished before the end of two weeks holidays. Once I'd exhausted my pile I'd spend ages sitting on the floor in the loungeroom, going through Mum's bookshelves and trying to decide which ones to read next.

As I've gotten older my love of reading has never waned. There have been times when I haven't had the time to read as often as I would have liked, such as when I was pregnant with Punky, and for about 8 months afterward. I was consumed with new Motherhood and there just wasn't enough room in my head for reading. At the end of the day I would fall on the lounge in a heap, switch on the telly and zone out.

However the thing that helped me emerge from that New Mum fog was reading. Picking up my first book to read in almost a year, it was amazing the change that came over me. I started feeling alive again. I started to feel like me again. Reading reminded me of who I was and I can honestly say that if I hadn't found my love of it again I don't think my mental health would have been in very good shape.

These days I still don't get a lot of time to read but I make a point of carving out a small moment of reading time before bed each night. It's my chance to disappear in to another world, to forget the stress of the day and messy house around me and lose myself in the story.

I'm currently reading the fourth book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and I fall in love with the series more and more with every page I read. I couldn't believe it the other night when I read the perfect description of what my One Perfect Moment posts are all about, written on the pages in front of me...

It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. 
There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came... 
But these - the still moments, as he called them to himself - they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible. They were like the photographs that Claire had brought him, save that the moments carried with them more than vision... 
He had such glimpses of Claire, of his sister, of Ian... small moments clipped out of time and perfectly preserved by some odd alchemy of memory, fixed in his mind like an insect in amber. And now he had another. 
For so long as he lived, he could recall this moment.
 - from Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon

As I sat in the quiet of the night, the rest of the house sleeping around me, I read those words and knew that I had to share them today. Here I was, in a small perfect moment of my own, reading words that described that moment better than any I could write myself.

Reading gives me small, perfect moments every day. Moments that I couldn't live without, and that I wouldn't ever give up again for anything.

Do you enjoy reading?


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Comments

Denyse Whelan said…
I too am a reader. In fact as a teen my mother wouldn't let me borrow from the library when it was term time...Mum was NOT a reader but she saw her daughter do nothing while there was a book to devour. I find there are few fiction books which interest me now, due to my age...(it's a thing) but I devour every newspaper I can and I like to follow different articles there as well. Thanks for the linky Kylie. Denyse x
Mystery Case said…
I use to be an avid reader. Not sure when things changed. I suspect it's a time thing and I've swapped picking up a good book for blog hopping. I'm determined though to get back to reading. All my girls love reading as well. We gave them kindles for Christmas but still prefer to pick up an actual book.
ADORE it - just close to finishing Burial Rites, then to start The Book Thief. I would spend my days writing if I were paid to do it!
LydiaCLee said…
I do - I'm paused a little at the moment, reading a book set in Kauai, which I got halfway thru on holidays but haven't touched since I got home...:(
I caught up on my reading while in Noosa last week. Books my teen daughter recommended to me. I love how she wanted me to read them and it's something that brings us even closer.
Hahaha, yep, that was me too, if there was reading to be done then nothing else was being done. Thankfully, most of the time Mum was more than happy to let me sit and read all day, I think she definitely saw the value in it. After I'd cleaned my room of course!
I'm the same, I love my Kindle but nothing will ever beat a real book. I switch back and forth, and the Kindle is awesome for when I finish a book but know I can't actually get to my nearest bookstore to grab another one, the Kindle bookstore is open 24/7.
You will love the Book Thief, it's one of my top 10 all-time favourites, the language alone is STUNNING!
I hate it when that happens. And then you get to a point where you wonder if you should bother trying to pick up where you left off or start reading from the beginning again.
Vanessa Connor said…
I love reading, too. I can't really exist without it. I seem to be reading a few thrillers lately which is unusual for me. That series sounds interesting. My ideal thing would be to work in a library surrounded by books. But somehow, avoid people! A people-free library. Yeah, that could work, right?? Sigh. Too many books, not enough time!
I'm a huge reader too - I thought for sure I'd pass it on to my kids, but nope. I swear they were swapped at birth!
Tonia Zemek said…
Such a lovely post - so nice to have a hobby like reading that's so accessible and so restorative x
Alicia-OneMotherHen said…
I do enjoy reading, but can't see at the moment where I could squeeze it in. I find if I still have the characters lingering in my head after a book, I find it hard to dive straight into another book. My head can't get round new characters with the old ones still in my brain. I guess that makes a good book, when the characters leave such an impression.

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