When I was a little girl and even before I could read, I used to cart around a huge book of children's poems, almost bigger than me. It was that year, the year I turned two, that my mom dressed me up as a bookworm for Halloween: green leotard and tights and oversized green sunglasses, a little green bonnet to top it all off (and don't forget my trusty book of poems). My mom recalls sneaking into my room at night, once I'd fallen asleep and switching the book I'd wrapped around for a stuffed animal--afraid, perhaps, I'd poke my eyes out if I always slept with books.

Over the years, books remained friends, they were portals into another world. I read everything I could get my hands on and even won my school read-a-thon when I was in second grade (the sixth graders were *not* pleased). It didn't much matter to me *what* I read, it was the act I craved. I poured through books on ambulances, on astronomy, on Amelia Earheart. My third grade teacher once declared when my mom came to get me from school, "Please let me know what she's reading. I want to be able to answer her questions." I think I asked how comets propel themselves through space.

When I got to UCLA, it was just the logical progression of a life-long love affair for me to study literature. I'd soaked up every bit I could up until then, even showing up nights my senior year of high school for a Spanish literature class to meet Garcia Marquez, Garcia Lorca, Borges, Ana Maria Matutue, Neruda and more. In college, I fell for books more than authors; Jeanette Winterson, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Oscar Wilde and a handful of others...rare exceptions whose entire life's work I would read cover to cover and finish craving more. In most cases, I was more fickle than that, falling for one or two books that someone wrote and not caring too much for the rest. Reading awakened me to the work I'm doing now to end oppression in it's many ugly manifestations. Radical feminists like bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, and Patricia Hill Collins informed a lot of my thinking and it became a priority to me to work for social change, to be a part of the movement to end violence, to be part of the solution. Indeed, books gave birth to the activist I am today. They gave my life a context and I am richer for them.

When I left school and I started a life, these friends took on a more secondary role. I had other things I had to do and didn't have the luxury then of my work being to read five books that week (Ok, it didn't always feel like a luxury then, either). And then, there was a phase where I would open books, start to read and become disengaged. Something just wouldn't click and I would put them down and try my hand at another.

But now, I am in love again. I am closing books, it seems, as soon as I open them, longing for there to be more, for them not to end, for one more chapter. Books that inspire me and touch my soul. Books I cannot put down. I am forcing friends out into bookstores to buy them and talk to me about what they saw in their landscape.

Yes, I have once again fallen. And it feels good.

* * * * * * *

If you feel so inclined, go get these. And if you do, tell me what you think.

The Hours Michael Cunningham

Trans-Sister Radio Chris Bohjalian

As Nature Made Him John Colapinto

and especially

The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold

Maybe soon I'll give you a list of oldies but goodies. Recommendations anyone? I'm tearing through Alice Sebold's Lucky at the moment and am sure to need a new friend soon.

October 16, 2002