So Many Books, So Little Time

When all was said and done, by the time Friday morning rolled around last week I really was not in the mood to drive to Minnesota. It’s a seven-hour drive (six and a half if you go easy on the beverages), and you must remember, I’m a New England girl. You can traverse all seven states, from Maine to Rhode Island, in less time it takes to drive from Lincoln to Minneapolis. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that before last Friday, I’d been behind the wheel four consecutive hours, at most.

I left at 9 a.m., and by 10, even before I’d reached Omaha, I’d blown through much of my “entertainment” (i.e. food). I’d eaten my entire lunch, including about a half pound of red licorice bites. I’d sucked down the bottle of Starbucks iced Mocha Frappuccino (a decision I will regret about four hours later). I’d called my mother, my sister and my best friend, none of whom where home, and left plaintive, desperate messages on their answering machines: “Hello? Hellooooo??? Are you there? If you’re there, please pick up…hello??? Okay…well, I guess you’re not there…”

Finally I popped in a book-on-CD, the first of seven CDs actually, of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. It was only then that I was able to relax a bit, settle in, let the cadence of Gladwell’s voice wash over me as the cornfields rolled by. And it was then that I had a revelation.

In the last few years it seems I’ve adopted a bad habit. I skim. I skim everything. Not only do I skim emails and text messages and CNN.com headlines and “Top 85 Beauty Buys” magazine articles, I breeze through novels, too. I careen through every bit of literature I read, and the sad result is that I absorb none of it. I don’t slow down to appreciate an expertly phrased metaphor or a breathtaking image. I don’t pause to consider the author’s word choice. I don’t even slow my pace to experience the joy of the written word. I just skim through it all, bent on…I’m not sure what. Finishing, I guess; moving onto the next book, like it’s chugging towards me on a factory conveyor belt.

When Brad was studying for his doctoral exams, my dad gave him a tee-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “So many books, so little time.” That’s sort of become my approach to reading these days, although I don’t have a killer, life-altering examination looming ahead of me.

For the record, I read the Bible this way, too. I skim; I speed-read, looking for the “good stuff.” I don’t typically mull over a line or two. I don’t pray over a particular passage. I don’t read it aloud (unless I’m preparing to serve as the week’s lay reader). I’m like one of those ginormous combines I see out in the corn fields this time of year, sucking in husks and spitting them out the other end. I suck in the Bible, and instead of letting it percolate in my mind and soul, it goes nowhere, settling into an unreachable vacuous space.

That’s why listening to Blink on CD was a revelation. Cooped up in my minivan, the highway spooling ahead of me for 500 miles, I didn’t have any other options. If I wanted entertainment, if I wanted to pass the time, I was going to have to slow down. I was forced to listen to Blink at whatever pace Malcolm chose to read it. And, lucky for me, he read it slowly, thoughtfully, with emphasis in all the right places.

I had the same experience at the conference. Listening to Patricia Hampl read from her memoir The Florist’s Daughter, I was transported from that pew in the echoing church to her father’s flower shop in St. Paul. I smelled the light scent of roses; I felt the chill burst from the flower cooler she described; I heard the creak of the clerk’s sturdy shoes. I was there in that flower shop on Christmas Eve as Patricia read her story.

What a powerful experience. And of course one that’s not unique to a live reading. These last few years I’ve been “too busy” to immerse myself in the beauty and respite offered by great literature, too rushed to really lose myself in someone else’s story, to become part of their story. As I drank in Patricia Hampl’s lyrical prose, as I absorbed Malcolm Gladwell’s riveting observations (all ten hours of them!), I remembered the gift of great literature and its power to transform.


I'm unwrapping my Tuesday with Emily. Click to read more stories of Tuesdays Unwrapped.