A Guilty Pleasure or is it Happiness in Purest Form?

Last night I stayed up until 3:00AM reading a book. It has been ages since I did that, and I didn't even know I missed it. When I was young, summer was for reading, and I can remember sitting in the mulberry trees with a book for long spans of time. 

I have missed that part of me. In Taiwan I remember rejoicing in typhoons that seemed to be scheduled in conjunction with Harry Potter book release dates just for me. Typhoon days allowed my new book to consume every minute of my time without having a distraction like work pull me away. The fact that I have learned to stop reading in order to work is a big step for me since I can remember turning in semi-finished assignments in elementary school just to get back to a good book.

I've imprisoned that part of me somewhere deep sometime along the way. I was always too unscheduled for my own good and spent life lost in typed pages. But look how far I've come! I have spent most of the summer at my desk diligently working through an anthropology class and planning expeditions and working on girls camp. All are things I do well, but when I don't have moments planned, I avoid books because I know that once distracted I don't get back on track until the last word is read.

That is what happened last night at 8:00PM when I sat down to read for only a few minutes before bed like a responsible adult. I was already disobeying my own direct orders of "only read fun books on Sunday," a plan contrived to keep me on track and productive. But as my relationship with the characters of These is my Words developed and I got wrapped up their hopes and dreams and sorrows and I developed my own desires for their outcomes I couldn't pull myself away until I simply couldn't see the words and had to rest my eyes.

I woke up four short hours later with the characters and their situations on my mind, so I picked that book back up and finished those last 50 pages. After I cried over the beautiful conclusion and thought about how that story relates to my story and the pieces of me I see in the characters I thought, "A book that sucks you in to the point where you miss it when you have to pause for such menial tasks as eating is one of the greatest joys in life." I have missed that kind of joy for what seems ages, and I'm so glad I got to experience it again in spite of what might have been the more responsible decision.