Such a Nerd

Books. They get me in trouble. I haven’t splurged on a nighttime read of a good book for at least two months now because of the mess of moving. Yesterday I loaded everybody up in the minivan and we drove down to the main library, which has a huge youth services section that I knew would keep my kids busy for awhile (although we didn’t stay as long as we would have liked because I swear Mr. Perpetual Mess just LOOKS at a library and gets a messy diaper, and being the eternally unprepared mother that I am, I left the diaper bag in the car which was parked in a not so convenient parking lot three blocks away from the library). I also knew that although I wasn’t about to try to drag three kids through the grown up fiction section at the library to find a few good novels, I would be able to find some worthwhile things in the juvenile fiction and young adult section.

And I did find some great book treasures. Fifteen of them, to be exact. I stuffed them in our library bag along with about twenty children’s picture books that Ms. CP insisted we NEEDED to take home.

After tucking everyone into bed last night, I decided to curl up with a good book and read while I listened to the pouring rain. I love reading inside at night when it’s raining outside.

I am a fast reader, very fast. When I start a book I can’t stop until I’m done. Sometimes I have a hard time stopping even to run to the bathroom. I am worse with books than most people are with movies, although you need to understand that to read your average children/young adult book takes me almost exactly the same amount of time it takes the average person to watch a movie. (A grown up novel usually takes 5-6 hours to chew through). I don’t skip pages. I read the whole novel, every time. I just get to going so fast because I can’t wait to find out what happens next. I just loose myself in fiction.

So when I started the first book, I felt like a starving reader. It was just like I hadn’t EATEN for two months and someone put a huge plate of the most delicious pasta right in front of me. I was reading even faster than usual, and I kept telling myself to slow down and enjoy the words, but I couldn’t! I just kept gulping up sentences!

I finished one book. I finished two books. And I finished the third novel at 4:00 a.m. (Mind you, at least one of my kids get up at 5:00 a.m., so I was a bit grouchy this afternoon when I wasn’t able to sneak in a nap because the two smallest didn’t nap at the same time.) All three books were amazingly good. When I finished the third book, I was so excited about the plot, characters and what had happened in the book that I couldn’t get to sleep!

I told my book-loving husband all about this, and he said to me, “Wow, you’re weird sometimes. You’re even weird for me!” In order that my household duties are not further neglected than usual, I have promised myself that I will not read any more books until Friday night at the soonest. But they are nearly burning a whole in my bookshelf, so I don’t know if I’ll make it that long.