Present Imperfect

Somewhere between "Once upon..." and "...ever after." | September 20, 2007

I got drunk last Friday and bought way too many books. Wait. Let me amend that statement: I got drunk last Friday night and bought a bunch of books. Maybe more than I'll read. But let me tell you something. Nick Hornby told me that was okay. He's got this column in The Believer (which I used to subscribe to but stopped because they only had to send it a mile from their offices to me but I always got it after it landed on newsstands, and besides, it was kinda pretentious and annoying...except for the Nick Hornby part I'm going to tell you about. Just gimme a minute, okay? Sheesh.) where he lists all the books he's bought and all the books he's read in a given month. And sometimes the former outnumbers the latter. And that's okay. Because if it's good enough for Nick Hornby, it's good enough for me.

That's the thing about books. If I could, I'd build a room entirely made out of books. I love the way they smell. I love the way they feel. I love the things they say. I'm starting to sound like I'd come on to a book in a bar, which I very likely would. You know, depending on its cover.

But most importantly, I'm no worse off for reading 20 pages of a book and putting it back on my shelf then I am for not reading those 20 pages at all. I come back to books after many years, either to read them again or to read them for the first time. I have an entire kingdom of discovery just waiting for me on my cheaply chic Crate & Barrel folding shelves. (Those things come in very handy when you move as much as I do.) I read two, three, four books at once and finish one. I follow the trail of references from one book to another. If I don't find my way back to the first one, well, that's fine. I mean, it's all about the journey, not the destination, right?

So I want to take this opportunity to offer some liberating words to those of you who claim you don't have the attention span or the time or the interest to finish a book: Fuck finishing. Start and see where that takes you.