Friday, February 20, 2015

And Now For Something Completely Different

Am I the only one who suffers from post-libris depression?  (And if you're a Latin scholar and I just committed some grave grammatical error please keep it to yourself.  Studying Latin is on the to-do list.  I should get to it by the time I'm 67 or so.)  A let-down after the completion of a really great book.  A feeling of loss, wishing you could travel back to an earlier time when you hadn't actually read said book so that you could start it all over again.  Feeling restless and lost, your mind frantically repeating the question over and over again, "But, but...but what shall I read?!?"

For me I find it better if I make an immediate shift to another genre.  Just as with the obsessive compulsive marathoning of television shows that sometimes takes place in my house late at night, you can't go from numerous episodes of Downton Abbey (is anyone else finding this season a bit disappointing?) into, say, a binge on North and South or some other historical British drama.  Each muddies the waters of the other and cheapens the experience of both.  I have to go from Downton to Dr. Who or The Walking Dead or American Horror Story or something similarly dissimilar.  

So here I was, awash in a sea of indecision, overwhelmed by the sheer number of titles available to me through that wicked, brilliant giant of a virtual establishment which is Amazon, when two events occurred which relieved me of my misery.  The first was that Toot started puking.  A lot.  And it's hard to maintain a bookish funk when one is cleaning up an endless stream of toddler vomit.  He of course shared his misery with his brothers and sister so this first puke was not the last puke. Thing Two summed up the hell my life has become this past week in the following conversation:

T2:  Mom, I smell throw up.
Mom: (wearily)  Where?
T2:  (eyes widening)  Everywhere.

But this development was accompanied by another, happier, turn as well.  My lovely sister e-gifted me a book on my new Kindle (which I now shall refer to as My Precious... because that's what I call it).  I'm pretty sure she was wearing a white hat and surrounded by a heavenly aura when she committed this act of charity.  Of course, I have no idea what she was actually wearing since everyone in their right mind is staying as far away from our House of Barf as possible.  I've tried to make it visitor friendly.  There's plastic sheeting outside and haz mat suits at the door.  It looks a lot like that scene from E.T. that traumatized us all as children.  But I've still had no takers.  And since my husband was out of town for work until this very evening, I have had no human companionship over the age of seven in several, several days.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

I'm kidding.  Sort of.  The thing that has kept me from going all Overlook Hotel on everyone has been My Precious and the delightful, change-of-pace cargo it now carries.  So as my household makes the subtle and seemingly inevitable shift from tummy complaints to what Thing One refers to as "the coughs," insuring me another round of sleepless nights, I make the much less subtle but much more enjoyable shift from sci-fi/fantasy to a mystery/crime novel and lose myself between the virtual pages of another fabulous book.          


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