Hannah got me a book for my birthday. She made a good choice and got me These Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World of ESPN. Not only is it about sports, it promises to have plenty of gossip and stories of inter-office backstabbing. Best of all, I can digest it in small bites.
During my high school years, I was probably one of the most frequent visitors to the West Elmira Branch Library. I always had a book checked out from the library. I spent a ton of time each summer sitting in one of our beat up old folding lawn chairs in our back yard, soaking up the sun (at least on my front side) while reading the latest book I'd checked out of the library. I used to love cracking open a new book, knowing that I could shut out reality (yes, even in blissful Elmira, you needed to shut out reality sometimes) and get lost in the story for a couple of days.
Somewhere along the line, though, things changed. The thought of opening a book stopped being exciting and became intimidating. I'm not sure exactly what happened but I think a lot of it had to do with having less free time. When I do have time to myself, I just don't want to commit that time to reading books. I'm the same way with DVD's. Books and movies seem like such big time investments and I'm not certain I'm going to get the return on that investment. I'd rather waste that time going to my favorite celebrity, music, and sports web sites or flipping between channels 623 (Investigation Discovery) and 665 (HGTV).
I have started to enjoy each week's short story in The New Yorker. Most of them are 4-6 pages long which is perfect. If I get through the first page and it's not working for me, I call it quits. If the story holds my interest, I put in the 15-20 minutes and walk away satisfied. This morning, I read a really good story in the May 23rd issue called The Trusty. It's by Ron Rash. I've tried to find it online so that I can link to it but it's behind the pay wall at The New Yorker so you can't get to it (which probably makes you say "Then why did you mention it?"). It's got a great ending. In fact, it was so good that I spent time online this morning googling Ron Rash, trying to find something else of his that I could read. Luckily for me, he's got several short story collections. I'll have to visit the library and give them a try.
This is where the magic happens.
