I’m reading a very terrible book. It’s a review book, so I can’t tell you what it is or who wrote it. I can’t even warn you not to waste your time! Not yet, anyway. But please know, I am suffering for the sake of readers everywhere. I am taking on the unpleasant task of slogging through these burdensome pages so that you don’t have to! Rejoice!
What kills me especially is that I have a stack of books, lovely hardcovers, that I got for Christmas, and the heartbroken looks on their pristine spines is nearly too much to take. “It’s not you!” I want to reassure them. “It’s me! I have to meet this deadline and earn my fifty bucks so I can buy more of you!” Not that they aren’t enough to keep me reading for a month, maybe two, but there’s always room for more. Poor new books. They’re just going to have to wait another couple days.
My book addiction waxes and wanes. I’m always reading, but I go long periods of time, we’re talking years, without buying. I have libraries, bookseller friends, review copies, and a life’s worth of previous purchases to keep me in words long after I’m dead. Some people do drugs, I do books.
But this time of year is tricky. After all that holiday shopping, I’m in the buying mode. My credit card just slides so easily out of my wallet. And T has ensemble rehearsal in Hanover every Saturday this month, and what does one do to while away the time while one waits for one’s child to be done with rehearsal? Why, one heads to the bookstore right down the street.
And these writers, these lovely writers, keep writing more books! If they would just pause for a year, I could catch up.
I know, I know, these are not real problems. Some people can’t read at all. Some people can’t afford food, never mind books. I should read my terrible book and be grateful I have eyes. Sigh. Fine.
But let me tell you, as soon as I’m done, as soon as I’ve written 225 words about the terribleness of this book, I am going to read five really good books in a row. So there.
Andi Diehn 