Another F***ing Book

January 25, 2008

The title of this post comes from a visit I made to the local Meijer store last week (for those of you not in their market, a Meijer store is like a Wal-Mart only not as annoying). I swung by the office supplies section to pick up some 3-ring binders, one to put all the various TABS and sheet music I've been collecting in a folder for songs I'll someday learn on the guitar, and the other two to try and deal with the various drafts of two major business reports I'm writing. I figured it's worth a shot, anyway.

The office supply section is right next to the aisle for books and I had this compulsion to swing by and see what was there and the thought that immediately popped into my head, and this is verbatim, was, "Don't go buy another fuckin' book."

Now, that's not a good thought for a guy who's a novelist and bibliomaniac. It suggests a major attitude problem, which is undoubtedly true, or at least it was on that day.

If you look at the photo, that's one wall of my office. It ignores the large bookcase upstairs and REALLY ignores the walk-in closet in the adjoining room that is FILLED with books and books and more books. And if you look really closely at the bottom 2 shelves of the tall bookcase, you might notice that they appear to be double-stacked. As a matter of fact, they are, and the books facing outward are on my to-be-read (TBR) list. There are 36 of them, which is half a year's reading, give or take.

And should I make it through those, I can always go into the walk-in closet and pull out one of the literally hundreds of unread books in there, or even re-read a favorite. Nope, no shortage of reading material in the Terry household. And my son keeps buying YA SF and fantasy and adventure that almost all looks good. Got some more Anthony Horowitz to read, for sure.

I think that day, I was being particularly struck by annoyance with the publishing world and my place in it, and I was also, as I was thinking yesterday, a two gallon bucket with a three gallon life. So I wasn't feeling very charitable toward those folks lucky enough to get their books on the shelves at major chain retail stores. I was, to say the least, wildly jealous and a little bit--although only momentarily--pissed off about it.

Anyway, I'm over it and just thinking of some books I want to buy. Because, after all, you can't have too many books, right?

Cheers,

Mark Terry