Reading: The Alternative to Life?

I've been a big reader all of my life. I learned to read early, learned to read fast, and was forbidden to watch tv as a child. Instead, I always had my nose in a book. I would walk to elementary school with the book open and my head down. My teachers would try to get me to put it down at recess but nothing was going on around the playground that was nearly as interesting as Swallows and Amazons. We moved a lot during an unfortunate time in my life- grades six, seven, eight and nine were each in different schools in different states and even different countries. But who needed friends when there were books?

As I moved on to adult life, my reading has ebbed and flowed in direct counterpoint to how busy and absorbing the rest of my life is. Without recounting all the ins and outs, I have sometimes wondered which was the cause and effect. Over the past several years, my life has been rich and full. I am completely incapable of putting a good book down and walking away from it. Thus, reading was relegated to a few deliberately lone weekends or solo business trips. I would save up my books, eying them on the shelf and walking around them until it was safe to pick one up, plunge in, and be gone to an alternate universe until the last page is done.

I discovered audiobooks on long drives, and adopted them also for chores and walks. But with audiobooks, you have to start and stop in arbitrary places when the activity is done. Plus, listening is three or four times slower than my reading speed. So my audiobooks are mostly nonfiction, or harder literary fiction, not mysteries or thrillers or fantasy novels. They are books where I am intellectually, rather than emotionally, engaged.

Now I've got my kindle. Suddenly, thousands of books are in the palm of my hand. I like to find mystery or science fiction authors, and then read a complete series. Neither the library nor Borders is likely to have older books in a series, but those are pure profit to Amazon to make available as only electrons.

I got the kindle barely a month ago. In that time, I've read eleven novels- probably more than all of last year put together. They vary in price from free (out of copyright nineteenth century books) to twelve dollars for a best seller only available in hardback. I've just come back from fourteenth century England, in Ken Follett's World Without End. The problem is, I was there almost all weekend. A gorgeous three day weekend, and I spent it on the couch. No walks, (but a sail- I had made a date, and a family dinner date). A fair amount of unconscious eating took place. I had a reasonable sized list of things that needed doing around the house, and crossed out just one small chore as complete. Right now, I'm blinking out, because I finished this absorbing book at 1:00 am this morning.

I think years of my life sped by while my nose was in a book. Now, with the whole literary universe in my fingers, can I manage to retain a grasp on the physical world and not upset my focus on my active life?

- iPhone uPdate