At the end of every work week, I hear people talk about their plans for the weekend. Movies, chores, hanging with friends, going out to eat, events with the kids, celebrations, mingling with family members. And always I stand aloof from them, not talking about my plans (because I've long ago learned of the odd looks one gets when "read" is the response to the question, 'Whatcha gonna do this weekend?'). After all, my plans are beautifully simple. Sequester myself with books and read. Reading - whether it be newspapers, popular novels, a new historical expose, a biography, magazines, book reviews, poetry or any concievable sort of fiction, non-fiction, or drama - is all I desire. I read. I read everything and anything.
And I find it all provocative, rewarding, soothing, infuriating, bewildering, amusing, entertaining, and rewarding.
Saturdays are the days I can indulge my predilection for reading without guilt (OK, mostly without guilt....today is the only fair weather day of the weekend and I should be out trimming the cork bush that has evolved into a protean creature taking over the yard and rambling up the roof, among other things). Exhausted from a demanding work week, during which I suffer the slings and arrows of the unfortunate legal assistant's life, Friday evenings arrive with the overwhelming sense of freedom and relief. But too tired to do much, I can indulge only a few chapters before I am forced to go to bed. But on Saturdays I get a morning to sleep late. My chores can be distributed - the least onorous performed on Saturday and the more strenuous left for Sundays when the work week looms and I've regained my strength after a lollygagging Saturday.
For example. Today, Saturday, February 28th, 2009, I had to gather up the garbage, put in a load of laundry (we don't have a dryer and I do hang-drying but there's a winter storm approaching so I've just a few hours). I snuck in a few sections of the paper before it was time to take one of my greyhounds to the vet for his rabies shot and other vaccinations. After dropping off the quaking beast to slink back into hiding I hurried to the food store for the basics (I do the "big" shopping on Sundays). Then a quick detour into the book store (inevitable). Then home with a sense of almost overwhelming relief - freedom! Free to sit, relax and read, read, read. And so far I have read the following:
The NY Times - Sunday Book Review including a wonderful review on the odd and ill-fated Flannery O'Conner and an End Piece detailing the program that uses literature and education as an alternative to jail time for certain offenders; Saturday Arts & Leisure, Business, and main sections; Friday Business and Arts & Leisure sections and the Thursday business section because my Mother pointed out it had a long piece on e-books and e-book reader technology. The various Business sections were each filled, sadly, with pieces on the massive Ponzi schemes that have been operated for years by two huge financial companies, both of which now have numerous executive indicted, under investigation and on trial. I also dug into the Sunday Magazine section with a great article on author John Cheever - about whom I knew very little, except that he was an alcoholic, a closeted homosexual and the father of author and sex addict, Susan Cheever. Most fascinating to learn, however, was that Cheever had never graduated High School. Which confirms my belief that it isn't what the schools give a person, but what the person chooses in the way of education.
From my book store visit (Barnes & Noble - I get better deals with my member card, although Borders has better sections for history, drama, science and the occult) - I returned home armed with a wealth of reading material. Sadly, I am a confirmed book addict. A bibliomaniac, if you will. Of course, as the Cheevers will tell you, there are worse addictions to indulge.
I had it in my mind to get the new hardcover history title, The Day Wall Street Exploded, which recounts the anarchist bombing in 1914 (and after a determined hunt managed to find one of the three copies they had stocked). Out in paperback was the sociological title, The Age of American Unreason by author Susan Jacoby, who laments the tenacious stupidity of our nation's populace. And succumbing to my curiosity and eternal, insatiable quest for information about WWII, I bought Michael Korda's With Wings Like Eages: A History of the Battle of Britain. Since I love "theme reading" experiences, I also purchased a second WWII flyboy book, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight by Robert Mrazek, a former Long Island politican turned novelist and historian. Yay, Long Island writers!
To satisfy my intellectual sweet tooth I purchased Connie Brockway's So Enchanting, Love With The Perfect Scoundrel by RITA-award winning romance author Sophia Nash, and You're The One That I Haunt - paranormal author Terri Garey's latest Nicki Styx novel.
After returning home with my booty, I looked over each book, deciding what subject I was hungry for (while preparing a chili dog for the other hunger). What I picked up first and have sunk right into - with attendant intellectual outrage and a flaring up of my latent feminist sensibilities - was A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx by Elaine Showalter. Her impassioned cry for the recognition long overdue America's female authors, from poets to playwrights, novelists and memoirists, is a rich and wonderful book - and I'm only up to page 19!
It is now 4 PM. I've done some more laundry, fed the birds, and prepared the dogs' dinner. I watch the day wane with a bleak awareness that tomorrow will bring those other chores. The chores that will mean I have to tear myself away from my reading. Responsibilities to my writing communities, my family, the house. But in the meantime I still have a few hours. And I can relish the fact that I have experienced a gamut of emotions and intellectual reactions from my day's reading. I've felt a curious desire to investigate the literature of Cheever and O'Connor (meaning I'd need to buy more books). I was pleased, and proud, as a reader and a lover of literature to discover the benefit it has provided (50% lower rate of recidivism among the felons in the programs) to the felonious community. My feminist ire burns brightly after I was reminded of the short shrift female authors of every stripe have received in this country. And I scoffed at Jeremy Piven's "mercury poisoning" excuse for dropping out of the Mamet play, found fault with the author of the e-book reader article for having overlooked the issue of books published only in e-format that cannot be held in anyone's hand because they are not available in that version, and I have raged (cerebrally - it's quieter and less disruptive in the suburbs) at the over-arching greed of so many in the finance community, those who've led us to the brink and into the recession abyss in which we now wallow.
Mostly what I have done, however, is simply read and think. Contemplate the material and allow it to sweep me from topic to topic, idea to idea, and to lust. Not to lust in my heart, but to lust in my soul for time, for more time, for the time to indulge in reading. Precious time.
Because reading never fails to seduce me. To lure me into a Saturday, to indulge in the hours of leisure time that reward me with the orgasmic intellectual stimulation of words.
Saturday begins to wind down. Dinner looms (though on Saturdays it is something simple and not time-consuming so I can quickly hurry back, tray in hand, to resume my reading). I'm having tuna melts on thick slabs of semolina bread, with soup for my evening meal. Aching from an elbow injury (stop carrying all the books, you suggest?) and a sore knee (last Sunday's yard chores) I'll take a warm bath tonight (because of course I can read while in the tub ... paperbacks dry out pretty quickly, you know).
Then before bed, in the depth of the dark, quiet night, perhaps as the snow that is predicted begins, I'll snuggle - relaxed, warm and sated with food - and before I close my eyes to get a good night's sleep that will help ease the week's exhaustion - before then, I'll read. Just a few more pages.
Just a few more words.
I'll read, just a little bit more.
