Book It

I live among books. Literally! Between me and Peggy, we have stacks and stacks of books...books we've read and want to save for later reference (or an annual re-reading, such as In Cold Blood or The Catcher In The Rye), books we have yet to read (I've never gotten around to even cracking A Child's Guide To Richard Nixon, which someone gave me when Old Pinocchio-Face was vice president), and extra copies we somehow acquired and will donate (there's a Little Free Library right around the corner from my Planet Fitness), and of course there's always The Book Thing Of Baltimore, the internationally famous warehouse full of free treasures. Just imagine, a free education, yours for the taking. You really have to see this place!

Fortunately, we have enough space in the house for the stacks and shelves of books we own. I find comfort in books, and knowledge, and enjoyment. If I have a book with me, I figure I'm never alone.

And some books, even if I haven't opened them since Watergate was in the news, it just feels good to have them around. It's like an old friend that you don't necessarily have to talk to every five minutes, but you know they would be there in one minute if you need to hear from them. The collections of Robert Benchley's essays or compendia of letters from writers such as Jack Kerouac or Gore Vidal are books I can pick up, open at random, and find myself awash in the memory of the first time I read that selection.  Or the fourteenth time!

I will confess to one big change in my reading habits. Because I was raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression, I was acclimated to not wasting anything, be it food, clothing, or money.  For that reason, many times earlier in life, I continued to plow through books that I found absolutely awful.
It might have been because I spent money for the book, maybe it was because I kept thinking that no one could really write this poorly and I thought with each turn of the page, it would all get better, but it didn't (John Grisham comes to mind).

But The Corrections changed everything. This hefty turgid log was a winner of the National Book Award and was on all the best seller lists, and the critics all broke their necks to praise it. I bought it, I started it, and I was stultified from the first. I kept thinking of the line in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” I really had the feeling that the books was dragging me with the current into the Sea of Bad Fiction, but did I stop reading?  I did not, but when I was finished at last, I vowed never again to stick with a book I was not enjoying. I dropped it like a bad habit! Because it was.

You can usually spot a dozen or so copies of it at the Book Thing!