I like to read a bit. Novels, preferably, but I also read biographies, histories, the funnies, the newspaper, cereal boxes. I even read directions and sometimes I read them right in front of Dean just so he knows how it’s done. A long time ago I thought I wanted to be a nurse so I read all about the human body and diseases and really complicated science stuff. I should have read more about practical things though, like “how to muffle the moaning of a very ill patient while you replace their urine-soaked sheet because you accidentally dipped it into the bedpan you were removing”. Eventually I figured out that the population of sick and ailing people would be better served if I read about Florence Nightingale instead of trying to be her. So I set out on a new career path – English Literature. I paid the university lots and lots of money and they not only let me read lots and lots of books but gave me a paper that qualified me to sell burgers at McDonalds or shelve books at the library, or if I was really lucky, sell books at B. Dalton.
I always read at bedtime and I always read when I eat lunch at work. I even have a room named after me at work. Really. I’m not kidding. “Cathy’s Room” is what they call it. It’s a little room filled with locked cabinets for super-secret papers nobody really cares about and bookshelves with large 3-ring binders filled with stuff nobody would want to read – not even me. But this little room, where the light is never on unless I am eating lunch, has a little table and two chairs so I can set my lunch on a flat surface, prop my feet on a chair, kick back and eat and read for 30 whole minutes, completely undisturbed. I am such a reader that when it was recently discovered that “Cathy’s Room” was going to be converted to an office, my fellow employees got together, stood in front of the door to “Cathy’s Room” and chanted
“save * the * room”, “save * the * room”. Not really. But I see the tears glistening in their eyes as they smile bravely at me when I’m walking down the hall now. Excuse me a moment while I get a tissue.
Anyway, I read. And I read more than one book at a time. And because I read more than one book at a time, and because I now have a Kindle, I am in the midst of a dilemma. I have my “Cathy’s Room” lunch book at work.
I have my bedtime reading book on the nightstand.
I have stacks of “waiting to be read” books.
And now I’ve started a book on the Kindle. I don’t know where to keep the Kindle or when to read it. I can’t replace the lunchtime book with the Kindle because what if I spill food on it? If I read the Kindle at bedtime, when will I finish the bedtime book? Should I carry it with me and read it whenever I get a few moments? Should I go to bed even earlier and first read the Kindle and then the bedtime book? If I don’t know when and where I’m going to read the Kindle, how will I know where to find it when I want it? How can I fit three in-progress books into my life?
I’m in hog heaven wallowing in books but I need help. I need suggestions. And I need recommendations for more books to download using that magic Kindle button.
