Nora Ephron's "I Feel Bad about my Neck"

This particular passage in Nora Ephron's book expressed so perfectly how I feel when I get completely 'into' a book that I felt compelled to share it with my fellow Bookmark members.

"I've just surfaced from spending several days in a state of rapture--with a book. I loved this book. I loved every second of it. I was transported into its world. I was reminded of all sorts of things in my own life. I was in anguish over the fate of its characters. I felt alive and engaged, and positively brilliant, bursting with ideas, brimming with memories of other books I've loved. I composed a dozen imaginary letters to the author, letters I'll never write, much less send. I wrote letters of praise. I wrote letters relating entirely inappropriate information about my own experiences with the author's subject matter. I even wrote a letter of recrimination when one of the characters died and I was grief-stricken. But mostly I wrote letters of gratitude: the state of rapture I experience when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read, but it doesn't happen every time or even every other time and when it does happen, I'm truly beside myself."

----------I Feel Bad about my Neck by Nora Ephron, pp. 117-118