Reading

I like to read. I don’t love to read. And I have trouble reading. Not with the mechanics but with the patience required. For the past several months I’ve been stuck in Bonhoeffer’s biography. My attention simply isn’t captured (about which I definitely feel guilty). So even though I’m in the middle of a book, I’m longing to read something. Just not just anything apparently, but something that’s too irresistible to put down. A book that’s enthralling. Since I’m an easily distracted reader, that’s a tall order.

I also like the idea of reading. It looks lovely when done by everyone else. When I read, however, I’m a sloppy, slouchy mess sprawled on a couch with bad lighting. I was better when I was little. I would climb up my favorite tree in the front yard or the big magnolia in the back yard as an adolescent and perch on a limb to read for hours uninterrupted.

But I didn’t have someone to take my picture and instagram it so I don’t think it counts. ;)

When I was little, the books I read were also designed for someone easily distracted. Not so much anymore. Now I read adult books (in order to have any sort of credibility as a reader :) and my favorites are fast moving disaster stories or weather stories or romance stories (real romance stories like the Scarlett Pimpernel). My husband, on the other hand, reads through Pulitzer prize books about Lincoln in two days. The Bonhoeffer book sits on my dresser and I feel guilty every time I look at it. It whispers to me ‘you’re not a REAL reader’. So then I wonder, what is a real reader? And do they actually exist anymore (besides Caroline, of course :)? Or are there just a bunch of fakers out there. Honestly, it takes too much effort to be a faker. I’ll just let Bonhoeffer languish and speed through a 100 page diddly about a farm girl at the turn of the century or a hiker who cut off his arm or a hurricane that wiped out Galveston. And I probably won’t look cute doing it. So there. :D

I would probably get a head ache if I did this.