Reading

Wow, I've actually been reading books lately! I used to be an avid reader when I was much younger, but then life seemed to get in the way. I stopped reading novels around year 11 and 12 when I started having to analyse them for the purposes of writing essays. Then at uni, if I had time to do any reading at all, it'd be for the purposes of researching for essays. After uni, if I had any free-time it would either be taken up with going out, sleeping, or doing housework. Now it seems that I have a bit more free-time, which is good because I can finally pick up on that old pastime.

I don't like to waste time with classics, or with "books I ought to read". If I read, I like to read something that is just exactly the kind of thing I want to read about. Does that make sense? Anyway, I have always been fascinated with escape stories (and survival stories). We had this book in the house ("True Stories of Great Escapes"), which I read at some point. I must've been pretty young at the time because I couldn't really remember anything from it. My sister had taken it from the house when she moved to Melbourne, and only just gave it back to me when I visited last September. When I re-read it the other week. I'm surprised that I read such a thing at a young age, because there's lots of semi-disturbing historical escapades involving bombs, death, amputation, starvation etc. But hey, my favourite part of Reader's Digest was always Drama in Real Life where people narrowly escaped encounters with sharks, mountain lions, falls from icy cliffs etc.

There are lots of amazing stories in this book. People digging tunnels to escape from POW camps, swimming 100km over the Baltic Sea to escape from East Germany (before the wall fell). And a simply EPIC tale of a group of Russians escaping from a Siberian prison camp and walking across the GOBI DESERT and the HIMALAYAS to INDIA.

After reading the stories in this book, I contemplated on whether I would be able to survive any of the many gruelling escapes. My answer was: NO. I think if I was in most of these situations, ie walking through barren deserts of sleet with clothes made out of deer and nothing to eat but tiny slithers of old black mangy pork, I would probably end up just curling up to die. I really am a massive wuss! I don't like being too hot, being too cold or being too hungry. Maybe that's why I find these stories so impressive, that the escapees can just keep on going despite extreme hardship and discomfort. Next time I find myself suddenly out on a cold night without a jacket, or when I forget to bring a muesli bar and apple to work and have to go without a morning snack, I'll think of them and try and toughen the f$#k up!