today begins my first day of class for my last year of institutional education.

wow.

as you can probably tell, i'm taking "summer reading" quite seriously this year. because of that, i've posted some of my favorite quotes from my books here on xanga. i love books. but not just any books,  i love GOOD books. which is a rather interesting comment to make because "good" is as subjective as a word as they come. i understand that, and so i should define a "good book" as i see it. a good author will make the words dance on the page before me. it isn't just about the story, anyone can write a story. but it takes a true author to make the very words on the page come alive and seep into your soul, captivating your emotions. a good book will make you laugh out loud and then chapters, even pages later will make you cry. a good book is like a good friend who you enjoy spending time with, hate to leave, and always keep as a part of you after they're gone. when you look at a good book after you have read, it is like looking at a picture of an old friend. one whom you have learned so much from and walked through a part of life with. holding a new book exhilarates me with the potential i possess. what will it teach me? what thoughts of mine will be challenged? how will i change? what new words of wisdom will i gain from this endeavor?

recently, i've been intrigued by the genre of the memoir. i learn great things from books and i also learn great things from the lives of other people. put the two together and i can learn incredible things. i began this endeavor with the tender bar by j.r. moehringer. it was the cover which attracted me to it, to be honest. a small boy, peering up at the potential reader caught my eye on a table in barnes & noble.  he looked up at me over a bar, with the background blurred. i took this book with me on the plane and read it while traveling. it comforted me when i missed america as it painted pictures of amtrak (my third home) and the yale campus (my favorite place in connecticut). it told of a lonely boy searching for something - hope, manliness, identity, love, acceptance - and "finding" it in the neighborhood bar. i can gain wisdom from the advice given to j.r. and i can learn from his mistakes. most of all, i am inspired by the eloquence of his writing, i am awed by his use of the english language. his words made me laugh out loud and his words make me cry. in the end, i felt like i knew him. if i ever meet him on an amtrak train, i may just go up and say hi.

my next book was not a memoir, but a book which i suppose you could classify as a "fictional memoir," if there were such a category.  the main character: enzo the dog. through the author's imaginitve use of narative, i learned about human kind through an outsider's perspective. i learned to view life from the wisdom of a race car driver and how to always focus on the present because there is nothing you can do about the past, and the future is yet to come. i learned that "the car goes where the eyes go" and that giving up is our only failure.

finally i come to my current read. i am one chapter into the memoir of Julie Andrews. i must capitalize her name out of sheer reverance for the woman that she is. this is one book that made me stop dead in my tracks as i saw it on the shelf. the front cover displays a picture of Ms. Andrews at the age of twenty or so and the back cover reveals a picture of her today. she has aged with grace and beauty. i am not sure what exactly draws me to her, but i will let you know as i read more of her life. this leads me to my next quote from my summer reading. found on page two of home, this simple sentence has me hooked already. those of you who know me and my fascination with being near any kind of water with understand why this sentence holds so much meaning: "there is music in water."

happy summer reading.