Insomnia and Rereading

The other day I mentioned something to my friend Jeremy about having a book light, to which he responded, "You read at night?" to which I affirmed that I do and he said, "You're one of those people."

Um. Okay.

I've been a night reader my entire life. I was much better at night reading when I was little and I didn't have a laptop next to my bed to distract me from all things non-laptop related, but I love reading and I love reading at night and being able to come to school the next day and say that between 9:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. I read an entire novel. And I never feel like I didn't get sleep. Reading an amazing book is invigorating. I never get that feeling from watching movies. Sometimes I'll stay up late watching a movie and I'll feel my eyelids start to droop, no matter how interesting the movie is, and when I wake up I usually regret the decision. But reading isn't like that.

When I was a younger pseudo-intellectual snob than I am now I really frowned upon the process of rereading. I thought that rereading a beloved book over and over again was a waste of time and a blatant avoidance of all the other amazing books that a person was yet to read. Now that I'm older, when I do have the chance to read a book outside of school, I find myself yearning to reread. I miss the characters I grew to love and the feeling I get from reading particular stories.

My sophomore year we did an exercise in my theatre class that was invented by this super important theatre teacher named Uta Hagen. Th exercise was simple- to do something that you do by yourself every single day. Most everyone in the class did homework, but I chose reading. I particularly chose to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have three favorite sections of the book that I used to flip to for a Harry Potter fix and I sat on a couch and read them in front of my class. My mom used to tell me that I made weird faces when I read and that I move my lips along with the story. My theatre teacher told me that she could see my face light up with emotion at the different parts of the book. I think they're two different ways of saying the same thing.

It's past 2 A.M. I have school tomorrow. I'm not tired at all. I have reading to do for class. I know I should sleep, but I just can't.