Fiction Addiction

My addiction to fiction began oh so many years ago when I was just a wee little girl who stayed up way past her bedtime to watch epic Hong Kong martial arts sagas full of nobility, heroism, gravity-defying fight scenes (with strings, pre-CG), and forbidden love. Anyone seen "Legend of the Condor Heroes," circa 1983? It's 60 episodes long! Anyhow, part of the reason I loved those movies so much was that everyone in them was Asian. Imagine that. There were only pretty white people on television back then ... not that much has changed, but people of color are certainly more visible on screen these days. So that was the beginning.

Then I discovered the library. Yes, my hubby teases me all the time because I get excited about going to the library and bookstore, but I simply can't help it; I'm compelled. I guess fairytales and ancient myths and stories of whimsical fantasy worlds were a welcome refuge for an awkward girl who didn't feel like she belonged anywhere. I wasn't as charming, witty or helpful around the house as my older sister, and when I opened my mouth, fear of saying the wrong thing or being laughed at rendered me mute. So I drowned myself in stories, tearing through everything from Sweet Valley Twins/High/?? (did they continue that series until Elizabeth and Jessica became grandparents or what?), to those choose-your-own plot interactive stories. In middle school I read those incestuous VC Andrews books, dared myself to read novels with 1000+ pages like Gone With the Wind, Les Miserables, & The Shogun, and discovered Anne Rice before Tom Cruise sensationalized Lestat. Oooh, vampires ... I could write an entire blog on the sex appeal of those cursed, tortured beings, but that's for another day. And then there was the pure, decadent bliss of novels that came in series: Stephen King's Dark Tower, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality, Raymond Feist and all of his sagas, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Orson Scott Card's Ender story ... What a concept - stories that don't have to end! And then there's manga and anime that goes on forever with different generations and everything. (On a side note, I'm truly pissed at Tokyo Pop for asking Spectrum Nexus - site that provides free online manga scans - to stop posting Fruits Basket. I'm going to have to wait like years before volume 23 comes out in English over here! Oh, the withdrawals are starting to set in. An entire blog devoted to why Fruits Basket is like a how-not-to parenting guide to come soon.)

Currently, I'm into anything by Jodi Picoult. The emotional profiles and relationships she offers pack a visceral wallop, so prepare yourself.

All this fiction, hundreds of books and films I've consumed, and I can't bring myself to create my own because I fear it will just reek, that my imagination is weak, that the magic and wonder I seek is something I can't actually ... ever grasp. (You see, I was compelled to rhyme because poetry is another strange addiction of mine too. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Addicts unite!)