I miss my books.
In the weeks leading up to and since the big move, I’ve found myself in an unusual situation: I haven’t made time to read. (Notice I didn’t go for the popular “I don’t have time to read” because, you know, we all know about priorities and deciding what’s important to us and so forth.)
Specifically, I’m so full-out, drop-dead-tired at the end of the night that my normal thirty-ish minutes of quality time with a story is . . . well, it just ain’t happening. I’m usually asleep on the couch before I pour myself upstairs, and then I’m out before the bedside lamp even clicks off.
This has happened before, of course, but not like this. Even in the chaos of wedding planning or the aftermath of a death or any of the myriad other times we find ourselves not reaching for books, I’ve continued reading in some capacity — even slowly. But lately? Here in the messy confines of the new house? My mind is too scattered, my attention divided. I’ve started and stopped several stories because I just couldn’t focus on them . . . and I know it’s a personal issue, really. They’re perfectly respectable stories, you know? It’s me. I’m the problem.
Sometimes my husband can get my mind back on the book, if you will. When he wants to stay up reading in bed, I curl at his side with the contented sigh of bookish types everywhere. Old daydreams often had me imagining reading time with my special someone, but Spencer has never been into fiction (though he did inhale the Hunger Games series once). I never thought we’d get that reading time in together, and honestly? In my darkest weirdo heart, it used to worry me that I’d disturb him night after night with something I love so much. I was concerned I’d have to stop my nighttime routines.
That’s why the Kindle is so handy, I think. Even when I don’t really feel like reading, I can flip ‘er on and take in a few pages before I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. I’ve been reading Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.’s Empty Mansions for months at the recommendation of Andi, and I’ve loved it from page one! Huguette Clark is so eccentric and kind and fascinating. But I read, like, three pages each night. At this rate, I’ll finish around Christmas.
Just in time to ask Santa for more books . . . ones I’ll pile atop all my sad, lonely novels in boxes and bags around the house until the new library is ready.
Maybe the Big Guy’s elves can swoop in early and work on that one for us, too.
Where do you fit in reading time?
Are you a before-bedtime reader, a lunchtime warrior
or another sort completely?