Meeting new people in a new neighborhood I have found out something that I should have known. If we meet someone who reads, especially fiction, and someone who is a movie watcher, we become friends almost at once. We have so much to talk about right from the beginning.
Whereas if our only bond is living on the same street, what's there to say after comparing where we came from?
I can almost claim to be instantly closer friends with a new person that reads than older ones who do not. Do you find this? Are your closest friends readers?
12 comments:
Yes and yes. All of our friends are readers and movie-goers. I find it hard to connect with people who are "disengaged."
Patti, I don't have friends to discuss books and movies with, though I do talk about books, movies, food, and music with my colleagues. My closest friends are my blog friends, like you, and that's where I find connect the most.
Yes, absolutely. I consider most of my closest friends to be members of DAPA-EM, most of whom I've known for 35 years or more.
My oldest and dearest friends (all of whom, sadly, live hundreds of miles away) and I often text/email about books (and other social/political/cultural events upon which we are sympatico), but I have to say that my geographical friends and I tend to have other things in common (church, work, community organizations) rather than books. I guess my friends here in the blogosphere are the people I talk books with the most.
I remember when my kids were home (so many years ago now) we were very close to people in baseball, PTA, girl scouts, etc. but those days were over by the nineties. I have many very bright friends who do not read and I have trouble making conversation with them beyond similar political opinions that lead to often to screeds. Whereas I have met several people in the last few months, I had an immediate love for.
In real life, my closest friends are folks I work with and some of them are readers, others not. I do form that instant bond with another reader though.
In real life, I find it hard to sustain an evening out with people who don't like stories-books, movies, tv. Talking about illness, investments, children, politics only goes so far.
Oh, that's very true of me , too, Patti. I always have a connection with people who read. In fact, as I've told my husband, I couldn't really be happy married to a man who wasn't a reader.
Jackie says that when she was teaching she had that to talk about with fellow teachers - the administration, the students, etc. But many of them were not readers (you'd think a teacher would read, wouldn't you?) and it was a "school friendship" only. Once that connection was gone, so was the friendship.
Yes, I remember that phenomenon with work friends.
I've always been pretty much a loner, without a lot of friends except for "work friends", the people who I knew and liked in the workplace but socialized with infrequently. Those work friends fell into two categories: the ones I talked work with (and everyday stuff like weather, news and other people, and those I talked to about books, music, food and gardening. I still have a couple of those later friends, none of the former. Now that I'm retired, and married, the friends are readers, gardeners and people Barbara quilts with. Plus, of course, the DAPA and "blog friends". Most of our friends are what I call friends to talk to, but not not friends I'd want to spend an evening with. But I'd sure like to spend an evening talking and hanging out with most of the blog friends.
We also have no family in the pacific northwest, so we're kinda on our own here.
Just about all of my close friends are readers.
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