No reviews or memes or exciting links today. I just feel like babbling a little if that’s okay with you. If it isn’t, I presume you know how to take yourself elsewhere, not that I want you to go elsewhere, but you know what I mean.

So, read any good books lately? Heh. Do you hate it when non-readers ask you that? I do. I don’t know what they are expecting me to say. If I say yes then they ask me for titles and I kind of cringe inside because I know they are not interested in reading any of the titles I might rattle off. Sometimes I try to name books I think they might like in the hope that maybe they really are looking for a book suggestion. But mostly no matter what I say I get a blank but polite stare.

Now and then the non-reader might recognize a title or author and bark out commentary like, I read that and hated it. How am I supposed to respond to that? Or they’ll say, Virginia Woolf? Are you taking a literature class or something? And I will say no and they will be all astonished and say you read Woolf for fun? And then I get embarrassed because I can see the look in their eyes which is then followed by accusations of me being a super smart genius (um no) or a big weirdo (maybe?) but either way I am clearly not normal.

Then there is the follow up question, how many books do you read in a year? When a non-reader asks you this you know anything more than one or two is going to seem like a lot so when I stammer out that I read 67 books last year the person’s eyes get big and round and then they say something like, you must read really fast. Implying of course that if I don’t read fast then I really am weird because no normal person would actually spend so much time with books.

The conversation usually ends with the other person wondering how I manage to have so much time to read when they themselves are so busy there is not a minute in their day to sit down with a book. And I know this is a veiled accusation that I am somehow lazy and spend a lot of time doing nothing because reading, to a non-reading person, is nothing. The person walks away feeling superior and I am left to be the freak I so obviously am.

This is why I love the internet and book blogs. Because you all are my tribe. Among you I am completely normal and it is the non-readers who are freaks. We can babble on and on endlessly about all the books we are reading and want to read, about being excited over so-and-so publishing a new book or going to hear a favorite author read or the treasures we found at the used bookstore or the library. It feels good to be among you and not feel embarrassed or weird or accused. It’s home.