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The Obsessive Reader Who Never Reads

There is no question I fear more from intellectual types than the dreaded literary question, "What are you reading?"  Among certain people, it is always assumed that you spend your evenings, curled up on a couch, a snifter of brandy by your side, with thin-rimmed glasses set atop the edge of your nose, completely immersed in some classic novel.   Sadly, I haven't sat down with a book in many years.  It is, among others, one of my biggest regrets.

Despite have a plethora of spare time, I just can't keep fixated on one subject.  I make excuses constantly, claiming bad lighting, no comfortable seating or an acute case of adult ADD.  Two of these three claims can be easily proven, the other is probably something I have had since birth, but luckily was born in a time where it wasn't stigmatized.  I've always had problems with reading.  Not the actual act, but the act of sitting still long enough to actually read something.  I claim also to be a slow reader, but many who have handed me items, don't believe it to be true.  My father just handed me a three page section of a book written by Patti Smith, where she talks about her time with the poet Jim Carroll.  I could go on and on about this, but what I found was, I was soon ten pages in and the clock had barely moved.  Interesting writing captivates me and makes me lose sense of time and space, which is a wonderful feeling.  I remember reading Delillo's White Noise in one sitting, albeit an 11 hour sitting.  I attack books like movies, but soon realize that I could watch six movies in the same time and these stimulants will take me in six different directions and I generally choose this method of escapism.

I recently took a quiz on "classic literature" and was shocked at how much I had read, almost all during my younger years.  A few weeks ago, a good friend told me they were somewhat amazed at how much I read.  I looked puzzled, but they explained that while reading my rants, responses and diatribes on Facebook, they realized that I had researched all the topics I was commenting on, citing sources and displaying an incredible memory for multiple topics.  They asked me to do a little test.  To take a day and count the pages I had read.  I didn't even know how to go about this, but I did anyway.  The final tally at the end of the day was 256 paragraphs.  I don't know how much that is in comparison to a novel and I don't know if that would be considered a lot, by the every day reader.  That is how little I know about reading.

I enjoy reading, but I get bored easily. I am constantly starting books, magazine articles and other written works and putting them down before I am finished.  I usually do so, simply because I am no longer interested.  This is why the works of someone like Stephen King disgust me.  Get to the damn point already!  I love reading short stories, poems or critical essays.  Things with a clear beginning, middle and end.  I also need the writing to make me visualize.  I hate photographs and drawings in novels, because I need to be able to make the story my own.  I love dissecting each line as I read, trying to see where the story is going before it does.  I have become so adept at doing this in movies, that the twists that become that of legend are usually a ho-hum experience for me.  This doesn't mean they aren't enjoyable.  It actually pushes me internally to one day sit down and do it myself.  I just need that spark of inspiration, because I realize how much of my writing is shit.

I rarely sit down to read a novel anymore and this is one of my personal demons.  I might die without ever reading the classic not taught in our educational system.  There may be an uncomfortable silence, from the person who always has an opinion, when the topic of literature comes up.  I will try and change that, but for now, I'm too consumed knowing everything there is to know about two thousand different topics and while some might have to do with pride and/or prejudice, I will be silent when one comments or questions anything pertaining to the Austen novel.  I might have grown up in a different time, but I have succumbed to the 140 characters or less generation and I'm not entirely ashamed.

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