Book Jonesing
I officially ran out of things to read last night…. it was 3am… and it was nothing less than TRAGIC. I did the frantic thing where you go through stacks of books hoping that you’ll find something you haven’t read yet… something you bought and never got to…. ugh.
Since I have the world’s worse case of Evening Sickness that leaves me feeling like a disabled person with vertigo who just ate scrambled eggs on a small ship in the middle of a terrible storm that is tossing the ship relentlessly on 50 foot waves, I have altered my sleep schedule so as to fall asleep almost the minute I get home and wake up around 2-3am, thus enabling myself to sleep through the worst of the nausea. This of course means that I spent virutally no time with my son or husband and haven’t joined them for dinner in weeks…. it also means that at 3am, I need something to READ, dammit.
God, I even did that thing where you find a book that you don’t quite remember reading… in this case, “Trace” by Patricia Cornwell. It’s a hardback version, which is a clear signal that it was probably purchased for me at Christmas, as I rarely invest in hardbacks. A quick scan of the back of the cover… and still…. it’s possible I hadn’t read it…. a quick flip through the pages – I’ll admit it, now – I’m a TERRIBLE page folder. Yes, I know you shouldn’t do it. People have bought me inumerable bookmarks… I just like to dog-ear a book – it’s been read that way, man. The spine should be cracked, the pages folded and somewhere…somewhere.. in the book should be a splotch of peanut butter or salad dressing… something that tells you that this book was SO FUCKING FANTASTIC that I couldn’t put it down, even to eat a meal….
No dog-earing on the Cornwell book – HOT DIGGITY, I thought.
I hopped back into bed… with the window open and an awesome early morning May breeze blowing through the room… my snoring husband safely curled up in his blanket… an icecold Gingerale and a hunk of cheddar cheese and I was sooooo ready….
and DAMNED if by the 3 page I didn’t know, without a doubt, that I’d not only read this stupid book before… but didn’t even really enjoy it.
I was too bummed to make the trek out to the living room to start scanning the bookcase – I KNOW I’ve read all those books… so it would have been a matter of settling for the book I’d read the longest ago…
I’m now up to like 3 books a week. It’s time to do it. I’ve got to just bite the bullet and do it.
I’m going to to the library.