Homer's Travels: Something To Read

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Something To Read

For the past few weeks I've been tormenting the wife.  In the evening, after watching the weather, we get in bed and read.  For the past five or six weeks I have had nothing to read so I've just turned off the light.  This has driven the Wife crazy as she prefers not to read alone (I actually understand this - it bothers me too).  To make things worse, when the book I requested hadn't arrived for over three weeks, I decided that I would see if I could go the entire year without reading a book.  I looked at this as being similar to "The Year of Living Biblically" or "The Know-It-All", though my task was much simpler and less enlightening.

So I told the Wife I would not be reading any books this year and that she would have to be satisfied with the smattering of magazines, namely National Geographic and Wired, that I subscribe to.  She didn't like this but was ecstatic when both of my magazines arrived this week.

My plan was doing fine until I received an e-mail yesterday:
"This message is to inform you that the item you requested is now available:
 Inversions by Banks, Iain, (1954-) 
 The reserved item will be held until 1/29.  After that time, the item will no longer be held for you."
 I considered not going to pick it up and to just stick with my no reading plan but, to tell the truth, the idea of not reading a book all year just didn't seem like a very desirable undertaking.  The arrival of the e-mail gave me an out.  How could I ignore the e-mail?  That would be a waste of library funds and labor.

So I went to pick up the book today.  I went to the reference section where you pick up interlibrary loan material.  The nice lady at the desk looked at me and said no ... no book had come in.  After looking around it turns out that the book was not ordered through interlibrary loan.  The library had gone out and bought their own copy of the book.  Now I'm rally glad that I didn't ignore the e-mail.  I would have felt bad if I'd found out that they had gone out and bought a book just for me.

I felt good this afternoon as I started reading the book.  Now if I can just shake the pressure of having to return the book in just two weeks.

P.S. I know.  I can renew the book but ... The Pressure !!!

2 comments:

  1. I gotta say HD, I totally disagree with you on this one. I can't imagine getting to the end of my days and saying "boy, I sure am glad that I took that year off from reading"!

    (Security word is "picat". Is that a an infinite cat, or just 3.14159 cats?)

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  2. GH: I agree. I am reading a book right now and I have some reserved at the library.

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