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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Up In Smoke

posted by on June 11 at 12:05 PM

Over on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog, Stranger contributor Tom Nissley snapped a photo of a woman he nominates for Reader of the Year. I wonder what she’d say if she was forced to choose between her cigarette and her book.

I’ve seen some other hardcore readers who might be up for the title, though. I wrote about one in Constant Reader a while back: She was a young lady who was so engrossed in a copy of The Idiot that she didn’t even notice a fistfight that broke out literally right in front of her. This wasn’t “Oh, God, I’m going to ignore these crazy people” reading; she was making passionate love to Dostoevsky’s words with her eyes. And I saw a man reading a business management book while driving on I-5 a few weeks ago (memo to aforementioned man: fucking stop it!) Not to mention people who read while they walk on the sidewalk, who are my personal heroes when they’re not running directly into me.

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1

She wasn't oblivious to the fistfight, she was trying to ignore it. I did that once, there was a fight on a bus I was on, and I screwed myself into my seat and tried to concentrate on the book (Harlan Ellison's "Glass Teat", if you want to know). I looked up at one point to watch one of the combatants going backward out the doors with a knife in his gullet.

Posted by --MC | June 11, 2008 12:17 PM
2

I've decided to wait a few more weeks, until my kid is all the way out of the womb, before I start reading the Iliad to him. Because I'm not one of those reading freaks.

Posted by elenchos | June 11, 2008 1:03 PM
3

I walked head-on into many a lamppost while reading and walking in my younger days. Still do, but only for effect.

Favorite reader: Richard Harris in "This Sporting Life", who cradles a hopelessly thrashed pulp paperback throughout half the film, when he's not kicking his fellow rugby players in the nuts or shouting at the woman he loves. Wish I knew what the book was; it looked like a cheap crime novel. I loved the way he held it, like he was ripping it in half.

Posted by Fnarf | June 11, 2008 1:17 PM

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