While the early years of my life may have shown otherwise, I never caught the reading bug that is so prevalent in my family that all the walls in my house are covered with bookshelves and one of our car license plates says "WE READ" (I generally pronounce it in the past tense). My excuse always was "no patience," but seeing as I enjoyed my job sitting in a chair checking off commercial breaks on television last summer, I think it's time to come up with a new excuse.

Anyway, I have already talked about my avoidance of labelling a "favorite" anything as well, so it is a doubly rare occurence indeed that I would take to having a favorite author. My goodness, that would involve having to read more than one book by the same author! But yes, the unthinkable happened. I just finished The Prince of Tides, the second book I have read by Pat Conroy. There is only one other book that has ever moved me as much, and that was The Lords of Discipline, the first book I ever read that was written by Pat Conroy.

The way he uses the English language cannot be appropriately described by any words I could put together. Any cheesy analogy or comparison I could muster would only insult the genius and the real quality of the work. I can just say that parts of that book nearly moved me to tears-- a difficult task, especially for a book. With the exception of maybe Old Yeller (and John Kerry's concession speech), not even movies and tv affect me that much. It is so amazing that words on paper can move me like that, as well as a grand testament to the strength of Pat Conroy's prose. Can I relate to it? Absolutely, it is what I think makes the book so appealing and compelling, that he is able to make me relate and find common ground with poor southerners with troubled childhoods and memories in South Carolina that seem so fundamentally different.

I know myself too well to honestly believe that this is going to start me down the path of becoming a huge avid reader. I say after every great book that I finish that my experience with the book will make me become an avid reader (even after Lords of Discipline, my favorite book ever). I just hope that I find this level of fulfillment in the next book that I decide to pick up and perhaps the time between readings might get a bit smaller.

Oh yeah, and read the book before seeing the movie. The same applies much more so for the movie version of Lords of Discipline, because unlike its sibling, the Lords of Discipline movie was not nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.