Thursday, June 05, 2008

Poking Along

Some people in my family call me Poky because sometimes I am slow. This is definitely the case when it comes to reading this week. I am still reading Marie-Therese, Child of Terror, about Marie Antoinette's daughter, and it's still good, but I guess I am just not reading it that much. Yesterday I passed a desultory 30 minutes in the library looking around for something slightly more compelling, and picked up Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston, and I started that last night too. It's okay, but maybe a little bit lighter than I wanted. Today's reading consisted of two articles in the latest Atlantic Monthly, one by Sandra Tsing Loh about the mommy wars, and another about the rising crime rates in small cities. Both were good, and worth the price of the magazine. I also read an article in the New York Times about how insanely busy the months of May and June are for working parents as they juggle all the end-of-school-year activities and it reminded me that that also might be a reason for my lack of reading time. Many hours have been spent in the last weeks at band concerts, dance recitals, and the like.

It's times like this that make me question my obsessive dedication to the library. I can think of many many books that I want to read right now (including newish books by Ann Patchett and Hilary Mantel) but I can't get my hands on any of them. I have to patiently wait my turn in the really long library line. I could go out and buy them, and sometimes I think that as a book lover I ought to go out and buy them, but somehow it just feels like cheating.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

".....I think that as a book lover I ought to go out and buy them, but somehow it just feels like cheating......".

It's time you forked out $400 to buy Amazon.com's Kindle Reader.

Thereafter, each time you want to read a new book you'll simply pay $10, and it'll be downloaded into your Kindle reader without you having to step outside your home.

Reading books printed on paper is so....how shall I say...twentieth century.

But with the Kindle Reader you proclaim yourself an avant-garde person of this, the twenty-first century.

Anonymous said...

But I still like the feel of a book in my hand and the smell of the pages (especially if it's an old book). And I find so many amazing bookmarks later -- everything from money to letters to cherished photos of my kids when they were babies.

Moi, I'm not ready for Kindle yet. It doesn't light my fire.

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