Just ask Mycroft Holmes
The first step in conquering an addiction is admitting that you have a problem. At least that's what I hear. So it's with a heavy heart that I bare my soul & tell the world: I can't stop reading. I walk to Borders on my lunch breaks & lose track of time. I borrow books from my brother, since I can't afford to buy a new one every week. When I bring a lunch to work, I sit in the cafeteria reading, blissfully oblivious to the buffoonery around me. I pick up catalogs for the Learning Annex when I walk to the liquor store, & read about the absurd classes they're offering. I read, re-read, & re-re-read trade paperbacks, mostly Peter Bagge's "Hate" & Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor". I...read...while...I...poop. Sometimes I get lost in the book & end up sitting there after I'm done. Yuck. When I lived in Portland, some of the best times were spent sitting alone in a coffee-shop, with a cup of joe & a Lucky Strike, reading H.P. Lovecraft while I waited for the waitress to bring my biscuits & gravy, miles away from any acquiantances who might threaten to disrupt my concentration.
Back to reading on my lunch break. It's the one time of day that I sepcifically set aside for reading. Not talking, not listening, not interacting...reading. One of the things that really frosted my beehive back when I rode the bus to work was that there was always some cretinoid who would ask me, "Whatcha reading?" I got into a couple of scrapes with people over it. Sounds dumb, I know, but when you're immersing yourself in the world a book has transported you to, it really sucks to be snapped back to reality, & it can make tempers flare.
So now when I'm sitting there, eating my sandwhich & minding my own business, my nose buried in a Raymond Chandler novel or a Chuck Paluhnik book my brother has loaned me, my temperament has mellowed, like a fine scotch, to the point where I don't go ballistic when someone pokes at the cover so they can see what it says, or they ask, "Oh, you like to read? Well, you must have read such-&-such! What did you think?"
9 times out of 10, the book they assume I've read & cherished is "The DaVinci Code", written by some pitiful hack, & soon to be a major motion picture that I won't see. Not only have I not read this much-ballyhooed piece of drivel, but I have no intention of wasting a perfectly good week of lunches wading through it. The fact that so many of my co-workers have gushing reviews is warning enough. Let's approach the situation logically. If the people who adore this trite tome have nothing incommon with me, besides the fact that we're both bipedal carbon-based life forms, I would say it stands to reason that our tastes in literature would not fall in the same realm. And no, I haven't read "Memoirs of a Geisha" either, people! Life's too short. Not to mention I've already taken up a costly amount of brain cells committing Star Wars trivia to memory. I'm not going to waste any more real estate in my cerebral cortex with selections from Oprah's book-of-the-month club. There's no room for literary Twinkies when I still haven't tried all the main courses sitting on the bookshelf. So why do I read the catalog to the Learning Annex, you ask?
Because I have a fucking problem! Didn't you read the beginning of this post?
Back to reading on my lunch break. It's the one time of day that I sepcifically set aside for reading. Not talking, not listening, not interacting...reading. One of the things that really frosted my beehive back when I rode the bus to work was that there was always some cretinoid who would ask me, "Whatcha reading?" I got into a couple of scrapes with people over it. Sounds dumb, I know, but when you're immersing yourself in the world a book has transported you to, it really sucks to be snapped back to reality, & it can make tempers flare.
So now when I'm sitting there, eating my sandwhich & minding my own business, my nose buried in a Raymond Chandler novel or a Chuck Paluhnik book my brother has loaned me, my temperament has mellowed, like a fine scotch, to the point where I don't go ballistic when someone pokes at the cover so they can see what it says, or they ask, "Oh, you like to read? Well, you must have read such-&-such! What did you think?"
9 times out of 10, the book they assume I've read & cherished is "The DaVinci Code", written by some pitiful hack, & soon to be a major motion picture that I won't see. Not only have I not read this much-ballyhooed piece of drivel, but I have no intention of wasting a perfectly good week of lunches wading through it. The fact that so many of my co-workers have gushing reviews is warning enough. Let's approach the situation logically. If the people who adore this trite tome have nothing incommon with me, besides the fact that we're both bipedal carbon-based life forms, I would say it stands to reason that our tastes in literature would not fall in the same realm. And no, I haven't read "Memoirs of a Geisha" either, people! Life's too short. Not to mention I've already taken up a costly amount of brain cells committing Star Wars trivia to memory. I'm not going to waste any more real estate in my cerebral cortex with selections from Oprah's book-of-the-month club. There's no room for literary Twinkies when I still haven't tried all the main courses sitting on the bookshelf. So why do I read the catalog to the Learning Annex, you ask?
Because I have a fucking problem! Didn't you read the beginning of this post?
posted by I. P. Frehley at 1:39 PM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
See the problem is. People are fascinated by books as an object not for its content. Think of a cat. When you read cats have this need to walk between you and the book. People have the same need. Since their corpulant bodies cannot fit between you and the book they do what they have been told to do... They "use their words" to come between you and the words. The last time I tried to read a book in public People asked me if I had read "Flowers in the Attic" Its been a while. Of course im not a lit addict like you.
2:38 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home