Whether you hold a solid book in your hands or flick your finger across a screen, finding a time and place for reading, often isn’t easy. Although in theory I have more time to peruse material, with no 9 to 5 job, so could slip in reading time whenever I felt like, reality is quite different. In actuality, when I worked in Jersey City and commuted on the subway from Queens, I had more reading time than before or since. 45 minutes both ways meant I went through a couple of books a week during a reading streak. Naturally, commuting wasn’t thrilling and I’d have preferred not to do it, especially after the very spot I traveled through was blown up during the first attack on the World Trade Center, one hour after I passed by. But if it has to be done, reading is the only way to keep from imagining various torturous ways to kill your fellow annoying passengers.
Now, even if I desperately want to sit and finish a read, I don’t do it. Mostly out of guilt. The guilt from the feeling I should be occupied with other things–cleaning, or cleaning, doing wash, or cleaning. I usually read only before I fall asleep, or if I wake up unable to sleep, or when I wake up in the morning. Notice it all depends on my sleeping pattern? This would change if I had what narrators on the House and Garden network call a ‘soaker tub’. Then I’d be wrinkled and prune-like after hours and hours floating in a pomegranate bath oil laden tub, finishing up a Ruth Rendell or the latest from Elaine Viets. In my teens I’d hang out in the tub reading until my mother was about to send a search party looking for me. But the tub has seen better days, mostly in the 1970s, and the yellow fiberglass isn’t appealing any more. There’s also a porch in the back which has nice lounge chairs. But whoever designed the bunker didn’t take into account heat or cold, so the only seasons one can bear to be out there is the slice between winter and summer loosely called Spring, and the other sliver of time between sweltering heat of summer, and the frozen tundra of winter, called Autumn. If I find myself available within those time frames, I attempt to relax, reclined, and ready for a good tale. Inevitably there will be interruptions of varying types, from phone calls, dogs peeing, or my mother asking why I’m not cleaning.
