Off the Wagon

Reading is my greatest guilty pleasure. I have no self-control, so I generally read in phases- a few weeks on, a few weeks off. I have to let my body recover from the nights spend hunched over on the cold tile floor of my bathroom while I read "just one more page" of a book I started with a promise "just to read the first few chapters." I generally finish the book around 4 a.m., crawl in bed with a sore butt and bloodshot eyes, cursing myself for staying up so late for a book that could still be sitting on my nightstand tomorrow. I usually wake up JP to tell him how mad I am at myself. He always backs me up.

My passion for the written word has gotten me in trouble many times. In elementary school my sister and I were frequently grounded for staying up past our bedtimes to read our books - usually with a flashlight under the covers. I had to sit out at recess in 4th grade - the only time I ever got a demerit - because my teacher found me reading my "fun" book tucked into my textbook in class. (In my defense, I'd already finished the chapter we were supposed to read. Not in my defense, it was a Babysitter's Club book and not anything that was going to expand my mind more than re-reading the assigned chapter.) In high school I quit pleasure reading cold turkey when I stayed up until moments before I had to leave for morning practice finishing Jurassic Park. By the time I'd survived the 5 a.m. practice, gone to school for 8 hours, and then done another 2 hour swim practice in the afternoon I thought I was going to die. I started up again when I had hip surgery the summer before college and when I did, and I was amazed and dismayed to find how slow my brain was processing the words - my eyes would skip ahead at their usual pace only to reach the end of the page and have no idea what they'd read. It was nearly a year before I didn't have to re-read a good portion of the pages. I hadn't realized that reading was a skill you had to stay in shape for.

I mentioned a while ago that I've been reading a lot more since I started working. This surprised me- after all, as a lawyer I spent most of my day reading. But at night there is nothing more relaxing than keeping the TV off and curling up in the corner of our couch with a good, semi-mindless book. Maybe I'm tired of staring at a screen. Or maybe I've finally reached a point where I have to be so "on" all-day, that even an extrovert like me needs to turn-off and escape. Preferably into medieval Wales.

I read five books while we were in D.C. - three of them were the Circle trilogy by Nora Roberts, a short and fluffy series about good v. evil that left me caring far more about the main characters than Stephenie Meyer ever got me to do in the extraordinarily one-dimensional (yet still somehow intriguing) Twilight books. Then it was darker fare from Ken Follett with The Pillars of the Earth and A Dangerous Fortune. I returned home to a new shipment from Amazon and was finally able to finish the Welsh series by Sharon Kay Penman -- absolutely phenomenal, if you like historical fiction- really good, heavily researched historical fiction that will have you googling the characters after you're done because you now must know everything about them, read her books. I cried my way through the end of The Reckoning and then dreamed about it all night. I still feel haunted. I love the way a good book can get under your skin and stay there for a while.

An Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon's latest installment is sitting on my desk at work. I've waited four years for that book. I had it delivered to the office so I could rip open the box the minute it arrived, but my plan backfired when I ended up in Houston for training from Wed-Fri of last week. It was a blessing in disguise because I stayed up very late with The Reckoning my first night in the hotel room (and very, very late working Monday and Tuesday night before I left) and I needed to catch up on my sleep this weekend. I'm almost afraid to pick up the new book tomorrow. I'm headed to Fort Worth Tuesday for a hearing and won't be back until very late and I have so much to do and I might be getting sick... I may have to give to my secretary to hold in a secret drawer until Friday.

This is one of the many reasons why I can never try recreational drugs, I can't even keep my reading habit under control.

(and if you'd like to feed my habit, I'm almost at the end of your suggestions- if you have any more, send them my way! I like just about everything.)