On reading — Tucked in between my days and nights were moments of another life in distant places: Mango Street, 4 Privet Drive, Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore, and many more. I hopped from place to place, life to life, moment to moment. At fifteen I found myself in a tub reading the Half-Blood Prince in less than 48 hours. I was simultaneously observing, learning, crying, growing, gnawing, yearning, breathing, and transforming word by word. In the summer of 2013: three straight days inside an apartment at the outskirts of Lisbon reading through Uncle Tom’s Cabin. From mystery, historical fiction, fantasy, self-help, memoirs, classics, romance, short stories, and more. Context switching, at its greatest. Transportation, at its easiest. Re-imagination, at its finest.
On counting — As the list of books I read grew, I became fascinated by the numbers behind it all. How many words, pages, sentences, lessons, new words, and chapters was I consuming? Was there a method behind the fervor? Were literary crop circles behind the bookends? All of a sudden reading took on a new dimension. Each page and mot français is a count, a tick towards a goal. Tick, tick, tick.