Addicted to Reading

It has occured to me lately that I read too much and too indiscriminately. Is it possible to read too much, you ask? Well, everything can be done to excess, can´t it? But having a cocaine habit is more frowned upon than having a reading habit. Admittedly, cocain will destroy your body and possibly your soul, but injudicious reading will only waste your time. Or let´s pretend that it´s so.

Here is a prime example. This is Philip Hoare´s biography on Noël Coward, a big fat book (I had to put my hand in the picture just so you´d really see how big this thing is, totally a blunt object) I ordered from the library on a whim, after reading that Coward had been a spy during the war, trained at Bletchley Park (which is one of our favourite places to have visited). Ok, so I was in a bit of a feverish haze at the time, from the influenza. This is the danger with the internet. Have an idea, and immediately send a request to the library, buy something you want, start any process that will be difficult to reverse. Do it all from the comfort of your recliner. As we all have learned by now, twittering is best not done under the influence, and Boney M was also onto something when they sang "don´t change lovers in the middle of the night". Restraint is sometimes a good thing. Consideration, and re-consideration, is recommended.

Anyway. That bookmark doesn´t say how much I have read, it says how much I have skimmed to try and find the Bletchley Park bit. And really, what do I care about Noel Coward? Sure, I know who he was, his show "Cavalcade" was the favourite of the Mitford sisters, Pip Torrens (excellent actor) has played him on a couple of occasions, and my husbands sometimes plays his songs when he is goofing around on Spotify. But certainly my smallish interest in Coward does not justify the time it would take to read all that. Also, for a relatively new book (what, 1995?) it has aged terribly. The paper is yellow and the book smells, not a good thing for my cough, not good at all. That I still can´t just close the darn thing and send it back is probably a fair measure of my addiction.

No, I need to be more selective. I have decided to limit myself to one book a week, preferably an e-book, and spend whatever spare time I have on other things. Good things, like meditation, going to the art gallery, taking a walk in the sun. Writing [hysterious laughter]. I probably need a separate twelve-week program for this, though...