I started reading I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, and it’s sucking me in so that the world around me goes black, and I have to claw my way out from the pages to not feel guilty for being absent from my family while I sit right here in the living room with them all around me.
It shouldn’t matter. I don’t know why I feel guilty. I think it’s because when I read that way, when I’m pulled into the vortex of a story where I’m walking alongside the characters and my real world disappears, I feel drugged, like I’m doing something wrong. It’s astonishing to me that humans can create experiences like this, that they can draw from the ether of imagination to string together words that, when combined with the gelatenous electric magic of the reader’s brain, makes us merge into something that doesn’t exist in this physical reality.
Speaking of physical reality, I finally gave up on my Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader. I tried to sideload a book from the library via my new laptop the other day — the same book I’m currently reading in physical form because I couldn’t ever get the blasted thing on my Nook and I had to drive to the library a day after I expected to be able to start the book — and I wasted three hours, THREE HOURS OF MY LIFE, trying unsuccessfully to to get access to the book on my Nook via the ridiculous Overdrive to Adobe Digital Editions to Android File Transfer to Nook gymnastics required for the Nook Glow. The process, on my day off, inspired sailor-level swearing until finally I rage-purchased a Kobo e-reader because it’s supposed to be the best non-tablet e-reader for connecting directly to your public library to borrow books.
I am in line for five digital books at my library. I hope my Kobo arrives in time for me to use it when my next hold is released. I’m trying to pace myself on my current book by writing this post and drinking a martini. It’s hard. I want to dive back in.
I’m diving back in.
Butterfly Mind 