Monday, October 21, 2013

Books and worms

When I was in Palm Springs this weekend, I impulsively bought Elizabeth Gilbert's new novel, which is being described as a ripping yarn about an independent woman of the 19th century. It's supposedly exhaustively researched, and breathlessly exciting. I'm hoping so.

Right now, I'm adding it to the pile, which just a cursory look at my bookshelf includes

IQ84
A Beautiful Mind
Patti Lupone's Memoir
God, A Biogra[y
Let the Great World Spin
A Great Unrecorded History: A new life of E.M. Forster
A Walk in the Woods
Why Does the World Exist

And that's just in front on the stacks. I can't help it. I'm a bookworm from way back. I have 3 books in my car at the moment. I've been reading Far From the Tree for about  months because it kind of breaks my heart every time I open it.  I read "Rapture Practice" in one day. I still haven't found my reading rhythm in LA after ten years, but I'm finding I'm much more likely to come home and crack open a book than I am to turn on the TV.   Luckily, I got rid of my DVR; it was a higher pressured bookshelf, as the programs would expire.  Now it's all streaming.  Without the pressure, I think I watch more.

I guess to take its place,  I re-upped my subscription to the New Yorker, since I missed it in print.  Luckily, those don't expire, but they do stack up like titles on a TiVo.

All this is to say, I don't have any business buying more books at the moment.  And yet, there are so many of interest. What can you do?

The other worms I've been thinking about are ear worms, those phrases of songs that get stuck in your ear for days, refusing to leave.  Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You" bops into my head fairly frequently.  The last couple of weeks it has been Miley Cyrus, god help me.

It must be how our brains work, recycling bits of catchiness that runs in the background like Muzak in a grocery store that we leave humming without even knowing we've heard.  I imagine all the books on my bookshelf started that way, with the thought equivalent that kept someone up, haunted them, hummed in the background until they finally wrote it down. It can happen with words, stories, memories, images.  Somethings lodge in our heads and just won't let go.

I like reading of others. It gives me some relief from my own.

2 comments:

dixiebelle said...

I enjoyed Bryson's A Walk in The Woods. It's easy reading and funny. I too have way too many books waiting for me to read them... waiting for them to take me away to some other life! I got rid of my cable service a year ago and it's been the best choice I have ever made! I honestly do not know how I found the time to watch the squawk box as my dad would call it! Enjoy your library of growing books!

Criticlasm said...

Thank you - I hear Walk in the Woods is great. IT's on the list!