I Read at Red Lights
So, I read a lot.
I’ve always read a lot. I pretty clearly remember the first page I read by myself that was all words, no pictures. It was a story about a panda bear. The book was a 1970s reading book a teacher friend of my mothers gave me. The first couple stories were mixed, images and words. But about ten pages in, there it was, a page of complete text. I read that page in one try and felt like I had flown to the moon. All words! No pictures! I was king of the world!
After that I was hooked. I carried a book with me in elementary school every day, read in class, read at lunch, read whenever I could. (I got in trouble a lot in high school for reading in class. I bet this was more common among geeks in the 80s than one might think.)
I was extraordinarily lucky in my maternal step-grandfather. He was a hardcore science fiction reader, and he had a quirk: he only read books once. He also had a decent job. These two things combined to my advantage. Every time I saw him, he’d hand me a couple grocery bags (the big old paper ones) full of once-read books. This … was awesome. It meant I could read and read and read and not have to pay for it. My parents bought me lots of books, and we were at the library all the time, but the steady stream of stuff from my grandfather was a big influence. (Later he developed emphysema; I knew he was close to passing when he was suffering too much to read anymore.)
In college, I invariably wore cargo pants — the better to stash a paperback. I shopped at what was then the Book Swap at Penn State, the better to feed the reading addiction with used books. Comics too.
Then for years, until the Kindle came along, I used a fanny pack/waist pack, solely to make sure I always had a book at hand. My kids hated it, my wife tolerated it, but if you have a book, you never arrive to early — you just find reading time!
I bought a second generation Kindle and never looked back. DRM sucks, the pricing is still too high, license vs own sucks, but the utility of the whole platform is just too high to ignore. I love being able to jump back and forth between my Paperwhite and my phone and my laptop, all without scrambling for a bookmark. I love the surprise of a new release simply appearing on my home screen at midnight.
Since I always have my phone, I always have a book. Lots of books, actually.
Actually, I Don’t Read at Red Lights
But I did, for a while. When I got out of grad school and got a job, I had a thirty to forty-five minute commute, pretty rural. Lots of red lights. Looong red lights.
Two weeks into the job, once I was used to driving stick, I was sitting at a red light. And it occurred to me: I could read 4–5 pages while I am stuck here.
This is a terrible idea. And it only took me a couple weeks to nearly get rear-ended to realize it. So don’t do it.
So Where is This Going?
I read all the time. I go through a lot of books. Mostly science fiction, fantasy, some thriller, some mystery, the occasional romance, etc.
In these entries I am going to chronicle what I read. Did I like it. Might you like it? Spoilers will abound. Not necessarily a traditional review, just my impressions.
One note, I reread lot, mainly because I read so fast that if I didn’t, I’d be broke. I won’t repeat reviews, but I will mention them.
