09.12.07
Books: reading, keeping, sharing
Via Mental Multivitamin, a homeschooling/books blog I read regularly, I was able to enjoy this post at Outer Life.
Most days I am in charge of two sleeps for Jamie, his nap and bedtime, and we rock while he has milk, up in our bedroom. The rocker is alongside the wall of paperback books, and so while my voice is on autopilot through the lullabies, my eyes usually wander the shelves. (I could turn the chair around I suppose and enjoy the view instead…) Since it is the paperback collection – or a portion of it, anyway – there are a lot of genre fiction books to ponder, and I think Outer Life is right on with why I and so many book lovers love these books. Familiarity. Even when a new book comes out, it’s so like the 10, 20, 50, 100 you’ve already read that it feels like a warm blanket.
I do tend to feel a bit sheepish about my passion for genre fiction – mysteries and Nora Roberts are the two I favor – so that it is “a guilty pleasure”, but it’s not a “secret fondness”. After all, these books are out on the shelves for all to see, and I openly tote them with me when I’m out and about with even the smallest possibility of time to read. Mostly I worry about what it does to my brain to have such a large percentage of my reading be genre fiction – and genre fiction that I’ve already read, at that. The biggest part of my problem is that I have zero willpower when it comes to putting down a book, unfi… unfini… unfinished. The time of day when I do most of my personal reading is bedtime, and frankly I know I can muster up a bit of willpower at midnight (which really should be at eleven) to put down a book in the middle if I’ve already read it, since technically it’s not an unfinished book anymore, right?
I guess we all have our special tricks for maneuvering our addictions and obsessions so that we can continue to be functional. I went to a library book sale last week and spent a long time in the mystery section, reading the backs of paperbacks in search of new authors to enjoy, and I came home with a bagful of single books that will lead me to series that I’ll probably like well enough to stay up several nights in a row reading, thus throwing the schedule and my temper into disarray and bringing on other types of guilty feelings. Besides the book sales, I have trained myself over the last few years to depend on my library system more than on the bookstore, and on the used-book seller when I actually want to own a book. So at least the budget isn’t breaking on new books, although it’s breaking on other issues now; it is a budget after all and is designed to be tested.
Staring at the paperbacks day after day, so that during the nighttime rock in the darkness I play games with myself remembering which title is where on the shelf, I have like Outer Life been pondering a cull – or, as I like to think of it, sharing the joy. I doubt I’ll ever get rid of my Agatha Christie books, but I think most of the Nora Roberts books are reaching the end of their lives on my shelves. I think it’s time for me to explore paperbackswap.com and bookmooch.com.
Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carroll « A Woman of Mystery said,
October 17, 2007 at 8:47 am
[...] (I have written in my other blog about the challenges of being a reading addict; the willpower exercise is an effort (hopefully to be more of a long-term habit) not to let reading subsume my entire life – silly, I know! – but instead maintain balance with pesky details like dishes, laundry, sleep, children… So it did take me two whole days to string together the necessary minutes to finish the book!) [...]