My Favorite Place To Read (Katherine Pritchett)

      Where is my favorite place to read? Well, lately, it’s been airplane seats (especially during a 26-hour travel day, with an overnight spent in the Dallas airport). It’s one place that there is not much else I should be doing. At home, I read anywhere I don’t have to watch where I’m going or handle power tools. My recliner is pretty comfy, though it occasionally lulls me into dozing as I’m reading. I read in bed a lot, too, often waking with a book on my face. I read at the kitchen table while eating my lunch. Sometimes I read on the couch with my feet up, Wimpy Dog snuggled beside me. However, the loveseat is pretty small for the both of us, and his moaning and groaning trying to get me to move over when there is no room disturbs my focus on the words. He also drools. Or maybe I did. Sometimes I sit on my front porch and read with my coffee on Saturday mornings on those rare days when I don’t have a full day of yard work or a meeting to attend. I read when I’m watching my grandson, while he’s napping (after I’ve had mine!). My granddaughters read in a hammock slung between their deck and a nice tree, shaded in all but early morning. I didn’t try it out on my last trip, though, daunted by a foot of snow and air temps hovering just at one degree.

               Still, I don’t read as many novels as I’d like. When I start to read a novel, unless it is truly horrible, I can’t stop. I’m an addict. I have to have more. Besides cuddling in my favorite places, I’ve tried reading while vacuuming, riding the exercise bike, working out on the elliptical, while loading laundry or dishes, while cooking, at stoplights, in restaurants. I look forward to work travel, because it often means I have a room to myself and can read myself to sleep instead of putting in another hour working via email. Usually, whatever else I’m trying to do suffers as I read, but I don’t care, because I’m so immersed in the world on the page that when I do try to come out, I’m disoriented, one foot still in that world. And it keeps trying to pull me back. While I conduct other tasks, my mind is pondering the foreshadowing in the novel, wondering what twist will come next, feeling the characters’ emotions more than my own.

                Therefore, I stick to magazines, as I can sometimes force myself to stop with one article (or two) or the monthly excerpts our local critique group brings to share. Otherwise, my house is adrift in the fur Wimpy Dog sheds daily, I run out of clean dishes and clothes, I sleep through the alarm, skip meetings, and my yard is knee high. To function in my life, I must try to control my addiction. But I have two flights coming up in May, and four books set aside for reading on them…