Time to read

When I am not working on a show, I long for the enforced discipline of learning lines. When I am working on a show I long to read for pleasure.

With The Vagina Monologues closing tomorrow night, I'll once again have time to read for pleasure. To say that I have a stack of books waiting for me is the definition of understatement. I own many, many books - enough that there are 12 copier paper boxes of books that I cannot unpack because there would be no place to put them. David's blog a has a picture on it somewhere of someone (Catherine maybe?) who has stacks of books 3 feet high down the hallways of her house. I haven't reached that point, but there is a couple of stacks in my dining room that reach, I guess, 6 feet and every time I buy a new book, it gets added to that stack.

I also have borrowed books. Books by and about Dorothy Parker from Les, Terry Pratchett paperbacks from Deb and Amy, a bio of Broadway legend Jed Harris from Ira, some James Joyce from David. And last year I started a project for myself whereby (what a great word!) I'm reading my own books and reshelving or deaccessioning them at the end of the last page. A lot of books have gone away, but more keep coming in.

Objectively, I own too many books. Hello, my name is Leta and I own too many books...

So now that I have some time to read, I want to just read. I bought a copy of Trollope's The Warden recently and I'm going to dive into it - along with the history of Scotland that I started yesterday. I bought the Scottish history several months ago, but have been continuously distracted by scripts. I read plays as though they were books, but they aren't. I'm going to read Middlemarch and make it past page 20 this time. I really am.

I have bedtime books (the Pratchetts, the Harris bio), books I carry around, books I keep at the office for emergency reading. I read at stoplights, I read Time magazine, I read while standing in line, I read if my dinner partner goes to the bathroom, I read during commercials while watching tv. I read during minor, outpatient surgery. I love to read. I love books - love to read books. I love the way they feel in my hands, I love the way they smell. I love to re-read books I've read before as though they are old friends because they are.

Okay, I gotta go. My books are calling me.