Finding myself with a little time on my hands on this Saturday afternoon, I sat down to do some reading. I picked up the book I started a couple of days ago, a literary novel almost 500 pages long, and I put it right down again. I just don’t have the time to invest in something that takes so much effort to read. I’m sure it’s a classic, because it says so all over the cover. But I needed something lighter.

In fact, at this point I was perfectly willing to reread something I’ve enjoyed before. I ransacked my bookshelves and pulled down one of my favorite novels, Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, and read the first few pages. This would have been a good way to spend the few uncommitted hours I might have available. The second thoughts I had this time weren’t about length, but weight.

Anything I start reading now is not likely to be finished by the time I leave for the lake next weekend. (That’s right. I’m taking a few days off, for the first time in over two years.) A book I’m going to pack to read on the boat should probably be a paperback, or at least a thinner volume than anything I’ve picked up so far. So I started hunting around the house, and then out in the garage (where the spider webs kept me from doing a more vigorous search).

Then I remembered the Borders gift certificate Suzanne gave me for Christmas, and I started looking for that, everywhere I could think of. I must have spent half an hour looking for it before I remembered that I already used it. In January, I think that was.

I nearly gave up, but I spied a grocery bag in the corner of the living room where I never clean. (One of many corners I never clean, actually.) It was filled with books that had been dropped off (again, by Suzanne, I think). Most were hard covers, but amongst them was a novel by Joyce Carol Oates called We Were the Mulvaneys. Paperback, not lightweight, but what’re you gonna do, right? So I started reading it. And I’m pretty sure it’s going to the lake with me.

I’ll definitely reread the Pilcher book at a later date, and I’ll probably end up rereading all of Maeve Binchy and Mary Stewart, rather than venturing into literary fiction any time soon. If I had to do a book report, I’d manage. But I’m a grown man and not taking a lit class and I don’t have to read anything I don’t want to. My time is valuable, and as I’ve mentioned a hundred times here, I’m a sloooow reader.