How Many Words Are in Your Head?

When I fall asleep at night, Arnfinn reads. When I wake up in the morning, he reads.
One morning, groggy, eyes narrow, I asked, "How many words are in your head? You know, roughly estimated?"
He answered, "How many years do we go back?"

As if he knows from year to year how many words have accumulated in his head and how much of the written word he has devoured.

Reading is a fascinating adventure, a learning  process, a necessity. I have an aunt who doesn't read books. I would feel I missed out on a wealth of treasures if I did not read. Living in Louisiana  many years ago, I got to know a woman about my age. She was illiterate. I tried to imagine her life; not being able to expand her thoughts, her knowledge, her life, with the witten word.

What to choose? There's a big difference between a volume about technical engineering and a romantic historical. A children's adventure by Swedish authoress Astrid Lindgren is very different from reading religious works by Hugh Nibley or Neal A. Maxwell. There are poems, short stories, biographies, history books . . .

So much to choose from.

Be picky. The words and stories you place on the hard drive in your brain stays there. What do you really want to fill your head with?
Read to learn, to expand your vocabulary, to enlighten your mind.
Read to go to new places, adevnture into unknown realms.
Read to relax.

My other blog Reading and Writing WORDS is about just that . . . the enjoyment of writing good words and reading even better ones.

Do you have favorite words?
An American friend of mine lived in Norway for a few years. Her favorite Norwegian word was strømpebukse, which means pantyhose, just for the fun of trying to pronounce it.
Try saying refrigerator in Spanish, pronouncing Dutch and Swiss words, or making gutteral utterings and clicking African sounds.

My father was so funny when he tried to speak foreign words. They turned out more complicated and strange than they originally were.

Right now I am delving into Citadel by Kate Mosse. I love it. I see Sandrine and her friends, I imagine the places they travel, I hear their voices, I go where they go and feel what they feel.

So read a good book today and enjoy it.

Today's water color is of a reading fairy.