Chapter 1

For a small period of my relatively short life, I worked in a book store. It wasn't much, I simply worked the counter for their mid-season clearance store in the middle of a local shopping centre.  One particular shift, a young mother walked up to me with her two children.  The boy, all of about six years old, had black circular glasses (including a strip of white ‘tape’ to “hold the broke bits together” as he informed me) and a lightening scar painted on his face.  His mum asked if the book store sold the Harry Potter series, confessing that she knew very little about the story at all.  Being a complete Potter fanatic since I could read, I explained how it was the first chapter book that I read and how good the series was.  She thanked me and headed towards the main store to purchase the books.  I didn’t think much of it until she walked past me on her way out, her two kids laden with books.  She saw me and smiled, before announcing that they’d bought the entire series.  I told her how the series was my entire childhood.  She paused, and, in a very sincere tone, said

"Well, you may have just given him his".

When I was seven years old, I believed in magic.
Jo Rowling's 'Harry Potter' was the first novel that I had read by myself and it affected me more profoundly then I could ever have imagined. With the turn of a page, I was introduced to a world of make-believe where (as a young book lover and self confessed know-it-all) I related to the characters and sympathized with their grievances. For hours on end, I would leave behind my second grade existence and immerse myself in the land of dragons, wizards, friendship, and bravery. Literature, for me, has been a form of escapism ever since. I constantly search for new titles, new authors, and new experiences. I want to read a book that will change my life.
 I want to be swept away in the opening line, immersed in the mind of another.
I want the words of someone wiser to effect me so profoundly that I emerge from the pages unrecognizable, a dozen revelations occurring to me at once.
I want a new perspective on life, a greater purpose. 
I want to lose myself in the smell of the pages, feel loss as the characters lose, delight as the world turns right - in the way that only happens in books.
I want to live in that world of certainty, in the world of the unimaginable, the day dreams of the concious. 
I want to exist in the impossible universe created by the weaver of words.
And so I shall.

This year, as my University experience commences, I shall strive to find that place. JOUR1111 poses many new challenges, and honestly? I can't wait. This is what I have been looking for - a chance to investigate; a chance to create.

My name is Kate Sheahan, and this is my life within the Printed Word.