Welcome to the website woven for wordaholics, logolepts, and verbivores. Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. If you are heels over head (as well as head over heels) in love with words, tarry here a while to graze or, perhaps, feast on the English language. Ours is the only language in which you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway and your nose can run and your feet can smell.

 

Three weeks ago in this space appeared my column headlined “Book people live forever in our hearts and minds.” Here are a few of the many thoughtful, incisive and emotionally honest responses from you, my dear readers:

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It will probably seem a little silly to you, but when I reached the last paragraph of your column, I ended with tears in my eyes. I’m a voracious reader, and I know what you said is true. I share books with a group of relatives and friends, and we discuss what the book’s characters are doing, and what impact the book had on us, and we also have some chuckles.

In response to your paragraph about the loneliness of those who don’t read, I too am never lonely because of the funny, scary, enlightening, depressing and happy characters in the books I read. They have enriched my world since I was a very little girl — and I’m now 73! — Nancy Servatius, National City

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As a child, I believed that it was unhealthy to read as much as I did, which were the Harry Potter series at age seven. Yet your article proves people who love literature as much as I do know that reading is not solely an escape, but a second life.

Those “characters” understand me better than my best friend can. The smell of old books, the rustle of pages turning, the echo of a person’s voice as they speak into the depths of my mind — how can one NOT be affected?

It is a privilege that fictional characters share their lives with the world. When the journey ends as I reach that last page and read that last word, my heart breaks a bit since they will be frozen in time, never moving forward. But the good thing is that those people I have met will never disappear; they will be waiting until I decide to enter the book again. — Richella A. Tamondong, freshman at Mesa College, Paradise Hills

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Reading in your column that E.B. White couldn’t keep his voice from cracking when he was making the audio book for “Charlotte’s Web” reminded me that I read that chapter to my first-graders for 25 years. And, like the author, I could never read of Charlotte’s death without getting emotional. I got tears just reading what you wrote in your column.

Yes, I love books; what first-grade teacher wouldn’t? Verbivores are good people! Thanks for sharing your love of books with us all. — Nancy B. Jones, Vista

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Years ago, when I had just graduated from college and moved to San Diego, I got caught up in reading the “Anne of Green Gables” series. Five or six books in, Anne is grown up, finally marries her childhood sweetheart and has a baby. The baby is sick and weak, and after a few days, “the wee white thing” dies. I was floored. Five books into a 100-year-old children’s book series and instead of a happily-ever-after, I get a dead baby?!

Just as I made it through those pages, my brother-in-law Jim called to tell me he had a few minutes to run an errand with me. I dropped the book and hopped into the car with him, and we took off down the freeway with me at the wheel. A few minutes in, when I’d settled into the drive, Anne’s loss came back to me, and I was overcome by huge, wracking sobs that shook my body. The tears blinded me, snot ran down my face and, as I wiped it away with my arm, I started to swerve all over the road.

I’m not sure whether Jim, never comfortable with my outpourings of emotion, was more horrified by my driving or my wailing. “Anne’s baby died,” I cried.

“Oh my God. Oh my God! Pull over,” he yelled. And then slowly, “Anne who?”

“Anne Shirley Blythe. Anne of Green Gables,” I managed to choke out. — Eileen Haley, Encinitas

Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com