Books

I was talking to Lauren the other day when she said "I've finished the book". My response was, "I've almost finished my book". The difference is, Lauren has been working on writing a book for the past couple of years where I have been working on reading a book for the past 6-7 months.

People who know me well know that I'm not a reader (I feel like I've blogged about that in the past), but today, for my first blog in weeks, I want to blog about books.

I've been dealing with a lot of books over the last few weeks. I've made it my mission to spend some time every Saturday, usually during the evening college football games, packing. I've been working on our bookshelves, and last weekend, I started the scariest bookshelf of them all - Lauren's office bookshelf.

For some reason, I find that bookshelf intimidating. I think it's because of all the knowledge it contains. I think of it as Lauren's mini-research resource center, and I worried about putting something in storage that I shouldn't, or messing up in some way. Also, the books just look heavy on that bookshelf. When people say their head hurts when doing research, I look at those books, and I can see the weight they would put on a researcher. Scary.

I was listening to Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air the other day - she is a regular book reviewer on the program. I find her voice very soothing, which you probably didn't really need to know, but I do. She was reviewing some novel and said it would go on the shelf of books she reads over and over again. As someone who doesn't find reading particularly pleasurable, I don't see why anyone would want to read books over and over. I'm not saying I have anything against people who do - I actually admire people who like reading that much - I just can't relate. I can count on one finger the number of books I've read more than once ($5 for the first person who can guess what book it was).

In packing our books, I ended up with a stack of books I don't want (which was most of my "pleasure-reading" books). I thought to myself, "I"m never going to read these again, why keep them". If anyone wants any of them, get in touch.

About the book I'm almost done reading; I've been reading Freakonomics since March, reading a few pages here and there. With Lauren gone and no one to talk to at 11 PM at night, I find myself reading, partly as way to hear another person's thoughts, since the person's thoughts I usually hear at 11 PM is miles and miles away.