Obsessive Reading

So here's what I'm struggling with right now. Sitting right next to me on the couch is the book my book club is reading for this month. It's staring at me, luring me in, trying to tell me that I can always do my school work later. I could pick up that heavy hardcover and just read a chapter or two and maybe THEN do my work. I could just read until ten. Or even better, I could stretch out on the couch and read for the next two hours and then do all my work first thing tomorrow morning. It will keep, my book tells me. Nighttime is perfect for reading. It's really better to do schoolwork in the daylight anyway. Yeah, right!

This is my problem. If I have a good book going, reading is all I want to do. I can make up all sorts of crazy excuses for why it really would be better for me to be reading than doing whatever else I should be doing. In the winter when my kids were little, I would take them to that play area in the mall (outside Macy's). I'd station myself on the bench next to the exit, open my book and read for as long as I possibly could. While all of the other parents had to make deals with their kids to get them to leave, I was making deals with my kids to make them STAY. If we went home, I'd have to play with them, feed them, whatever. But if we stayed, I could just keep reading.

When I was teaching high school, I could only read during the summer and during school vacations. I had so much school work to do, that I could not afford to get sucked into a book and do no work. Much as I loved my job, not reading new books was the worst part of it. But the BEST part of it, the part I still can't get over, is that I had and still have a job where I am paid (paid!!) to read books and talk about them with interesting other readers. It's like being paid to be in a book club. In fact, last semester, I'd come home from my 6-9pm Women in Lit class on Thursday nights, and my husband would say, "How was your book club tonight?" And he was right. That class which lasted three hours at the end of the week could have been pretty dull and long, but, in fact, (at least for me) the time just flew by as we debated whether characters were right to do what they did, the symbolism of broken-winged birds, the themes we saw being developed, and the many ways authors use language to communicate with their readers.

So I'd write more about this topic (like how I spent my entire childhood with my nose in a book), but there's this big yellow hardcover book sitting next to me on the couch and I really can't resist its call any longer! I'm off to read. I'll let you know how the book is once I'm done. :-)

Read on! Kristen