On Summer Reading Lists

If you had to compare it to a drug, really, reading is more
like alcohol than weed or heroine; some people just need
a nightcap to wind down from their day, others need it every
day t the expense of their health, but a lot of people just have
to develop a taste for it as they age.
Few people are natural addicts.

When I was a kid there was always some kind of contest at the local library for kids to read the most books out of a given list. This was of course back in the days when I went to a library, anyone else I knew was likely to be in a library and most of use were just hoping to book time on the computers to play Putt Putt educational games.

Honestly, I went to my college library for a book once, and I couldn't take it out because it was a scholarly journal, so I had to photocopy the damned thing. I think the rest of the time I used the library for a meeting or two and to use its printing station twice a week one semester. (There were a ton of articles to print each week, but after three years my weekly page allotment had rolled over into a small fortune in white, pulpy gold.) Senior year I actually remember following someone into the main part of the library and getting lost.

Oh, but in those days of yesteryear my library encouraged kids to read their faces off. Now, I've got no less than 29 different books sitting on my night stand forming my "to read" pile, two seasons of television and 3 movies sitting on top of my dresser, and I've honestly lost count of the number of shows/movies/documentaries I've downloaded or queued up on Netflix to be watched eventually, not to mention the dozen or so monthly comic series I keep up with as they hit the interbutts. I just never seem to have the time to get any of this crap read anymore. (Or watched.)

Man, this past week I've done well, though. I had three whole snow days and there's a three-day weekend ahead of me. I might really manage to burn through a small pile of this. If I could only somehow get rewarded for finishing all this reading I've accumulated. And perhaps if my progress were to be shown on a map of some sort, say, in the shape of a growing caterpillar….