When I was a kid, I was an avid reader. I absolutely loved novels of any kind from the more formulaic, Nancy Drew and BabySitter's club series, to classics like Pride & Prejudice. Over the years however, and especially over the last few years, I've all but stopped reading literature. Instead, most of the books that I'd read in recent memory were books related to education reform or policy, and if not, they were definitely non-fiction. Thankfully, this changed recently.When I was home over the holidays, I picked up my brother's old copy of Last Days of Summer. I had tried reading this book a few times and could never seem to get into the style of writing. If you haven't read it, the author makes use of written correspondence like letters and telegrams and other artifacts like playbills and movie stubs to tell the story. I brought the book home with me and after a few pages found myself nestled on the couch feverishly flipping pages wondering what was going to happen next. It felt amazing - like I was 12 again. I finished the book in one sitting!This experience evoked two reactions in me, the first is that I have forgotten what it feels like to fall in love with characters, to hope and pray things work out for them, that they achieve their dreams, marry their soulmate, etc. etc.. There is an inexplicable joy in feeling so strongly about people you can't see or touch. But that is what a great work of fiction can do, it can move you! This of course is credit to the writer who artfully constructed a novel using everyday texts, never did I miss the dialogue. From that Thursday on, I've been scouring book lists and getting suggestions from everyone about novels. The "to read" list that I'm documenting on my Good Reads account is getting bigger and bigger!The second thing it got me thinking about is about writing. Can you think of the last time you wrote a letter? I used to love handwritten letters. Most of them exchanged between my older sister and I. She; always imparting advice and sharing tidbits of her adventures in college and beyond, me; narrating the daily drama that was my life as a pre-teen. Unfortunately, e-mail and other forms of communication, fast eclipsed those handwritten letters. In addition to making a long list of books on my "to-read" list, I made a personal commitment to writing letters, the old fashioned way. That week, I sent off a card to my sister... par avion.The second letter I wrote just yesterday. As I sat down to write I realized how different this was in comparison to our regular e-mail/gchat/facebook/twitter etc. communications. There wasn't a specific topic, no direct subject line or URL to include. I meandered from topic to topic, having a one sided conversation, for which I will eagerly await a response. There might be no logic in such an act, but the sheer joy I've extracted from writing, from practicing cursive, from forcing myself to think deeply about each word, given that there's no backspace with pen, has been immense!And there you have it, the joy that reading a great book can bring you, not to mention the inspiration it spread throughout my life. Thanks to Last Days of Summer, I've reconnected with two of my great loves... reading and writing.PS. the image pictured is the first card my sister wrote back to me, compliments of this card company.