K M Walker

I live for that moment in a book when I fall in love. One soul-piercing turn of phrase and the author has me. I’ll put up with wonky plot twists, unrealistic characters and lengthy soliloquies on the meaning of life, if I can just get another hit of prose heroin.

Too many mornings I’ve been a haggard book fiend, after staying up all night, turning page after page. But then - there’s the inevitable cold turkey. 

As I get closer to the end of a gorgeous novel, I get that pit-of-the-stomach sick feeling (the better the book, the sicker the feeling) where I know I am about to lose a friend. I wrestle (while still reading) with wanting the book to slow down and speed up. Still, I rarely pump the brakes as the pages fly by.

It’s ironic that the act of reading slays the book. If you never reached the last page, it would live on, in infinite possibility. (But then you would never know what happens, which leads to its own kind of perpetual Jonesing). Barreling full speed into the ending, with no skid marks, I can finally satisfy that exquisite, deadly curiosity.

Sometimes it takes a few days or even weeks to mourn the loss of my book friend. Then it’s on to the next, with its vast, beautiful, endless possibilities. Reading is the only way you can fall in love a thousand, thousand times and no one gets hurt. Unless you actually have a car accident from lack of sleep.