I think taking the subway, as I've been rather faithfully doing this month, is a false economy.
I broke the book ban. We're not even a month into 2010!
Thing is, when I took a cab home, it whooshed me right past Noksapyeong Station and at Noksapyeong Station there is a used bookstore. A used bookstore that I find myself incredibly tempted by every.single.day.
However, I am allowed, under the terms of the book ban, to buy the odd book: book club novels, anything I get when I trade in, and naturally, the books that I need to buy in order to fill other 101 in 1001 items. This was the justification I used - I need The Sea, The Sea by Murdoch and for some reason in the back of my brain, I feel that I've seen it used somewhere, without cluing in to the fact that it was ringing bells in my brian for a reason. So, I figured, I'd go see if they had it there and if not, I could check What the Book later.
The Sea, The Sea wasn't there. But can I go into a bookstore and not buy a single book? No, no, I can not. Thus, I walked out of there with four - the most notable being Personal History by Kathleen Graham. I'm even so eager about purchasing it that I'd love to start reading it now.
However, there is just no way. Intensives are proving exhausting this month. First off, I'm teaching upper year courses that require prep of me - the annoying thing about assigning five chapters to my students to read per class is that I've got to read it too. And while I may be a faster reader, I have to do things like take notes and come up with teaching strategies and all. Plus, I've got to prep the SAT class, which again is no small amount of work, what with it being a one-on-one class.
With all the reading for classes and the early morning starts, by the time I get home all I want to do is eat dinner, preferably with as little cooking involved as is humanly possible, and stare at the TV. No reading, no thinking, no anything. On the upside, I finally understand what people are talking about when the reference House in a psych ward, or why Modern Family is basically The Office at home, and I think The Good Wife is fairly decent. I even watched the pilot for Caprica, which I think could be decent, though no Battlestar Galactica.
According to LivingSocial Books on Facebook, I'm presently reading 9 books already. Realistically, this isn't the case. The Giver is on there - that's what I'm teaching at the moment. Jitterbug Perfume is on there because it was a book club novel - the meeting was today and I only got 100 pages into it. Tom Robbins isn't really my cup of tea and in my present brainless mode, I really need to like what I'm reading to even want to stop staring at whatever I can find on Pandora. Then there's the two Anita Blake novels I'm supposedly reading - but I gave up Incubus Dreams 100 pages in to go back to the first book in the series, which I got halfway through before being distracted by Jitterbug Perfume. I started to read a book on Canadian politics by Elizabeth May, but it's too much work at the moment. There's The First Woman Doctor on that list - it's a work novel and will need to be finished soon. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I haven't touched in a solid year. I did recently try to pick up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell again (another long book I made it 100 pages into), but another chapter through, I gave up again.
The only thing I'm actually reading is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because it's the only thing right now that can compete with TV is an author who truly understands the disasterousness that is a Thursday.
If I had a book that said Don't Panic on the cover, I'd definitely read that.
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