Photo: Beverly Brooks

I, Eliza Jane Brazier, am a book addict.

Here are my confessions:

1. I have always expected my life to play out like a book, and am continually disappointed.

2. In elementary school I would bring enormous copies of classic books to read during class breaks: Little Women and Anne of Green Gables.

3. Growing up, I would go to the library and choose dozens of books which I would stack neatly and read one after the other, sitting on top of a dresser next to a lamp with no shade.

4. I was transported to a place where things make sense, where life had symmetry, where people were comprehensible and the ending always felt like an ending.

5. In college I would hide out in the library until closing. I would choose a (fairly pretentious) author and read every book they had ever written: Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Hemingway, Dante.

6. Then I would go to bookstores and read young adult authors for hours: Cecily Von Ziegesar, Libba Bray.

7. My voice would get so papery that I couldn’t speak.

8. I started writing my own stories, because the only cure for reading is writing.

9. Sometimes I would stop reading, and my life would seem empty and pointless…

10. …and then I would pick up the right book, and my life would be filled with color again.

11. Some books would make me feel like I, too, could be an author…

12. …and some would make me feel like I would never be that good.

13. Inside books, I would find myself. I would read my thoughts before I had the words to conjure them.

14. I would change my mind.

15. I would change myself.

16. I would read and write myself into a whole new life. I, Eliza Jane Brazier, am a book addict, living one book at a time.

Eliza Jane Brazier is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. Eliza entered the horse world at the age of 5 and has worked as a rider, horse trainer, and riding instructor. She currently lives in California with her horse and dogs, where she is developing her books for television.