The Emerald Rose

          I have come to love a number of magazines, and subscribe to about five or six a month. They all have one thing in common that I unequivocably loath, detest, abhor, and ….well you get the idea without more adjectives I hope, and that is the damn little postcard size, 60 0r 120 pound stock, cards that either fall out of the magazine when you pick it up, or are actually two cards and stapled into the magazine so it shows up on two different pages offering “FREE Bonus gift with your subscription”, or some other equally annoying piece of crap advertising.

           When I first get my magazine I go straight to the trash barrel and shake it over the open barrel, they I quietly sit down and tear out all the remaining card stock items. After assuring myself they are all out and I can read the magazine unaccosted by falling paper, or annoying stiffness which makes turning a page difficult, I quietly pick them all up and wring their bloody neck like a chicken’s, and prceed to throw them in the barrel as well. All of this without ever looking to see what they say or what they offer.

           For a while I used to see who they were from and what they offered so I could insure myself I knew whose products to boycott, that was until I realized I was doing exactly what they wanted me to do,….read the damn things! So no more, it could be a check for $100,000, and I guarantee you I don’t even notice anymore, ,….pull, tear, wring, and trash! Voila, another Madison Avenue threat averted.

         Well on to something different, but in a similar vein. Despite the fact that you will have to pry my “nook” e-reader device from my cold dead fingers when I pass, and th3e fact that it has got me back to reading two novels a week again, (Don’t ask me when I have time, but at the gym on the treadmill, during commercials on the tellie, and until my eyelids will no longer focus after I’ve gone to bed, or my wife kicks me in the butt and says, “Will you turn off that damn light and get some sleep!”), it is marvelous,….but it has created a problem for me.

         After buying it I have definately built my reading skills back up to where they were before I started wearing glasses all the time, but I always want to have at least two books on hand, and I’m getting much more adventuresome in expanding the authors and genres I am reading. BUT I still make my weekly prilgrimage to the Banres & Noble Store to peruse the shelves, “fondle” the books, read the inside front dustcover recaps, then I go home and order the ones I really like. But the other day as I was doing my wandering and fondling it dawned on me because I’m approaching 66 far to rapidly I will never get to read all the books I want to read,…soooooo I began to sweat and worry and even panic! So many books so little time!

          But what to my wandering eyes should appear? No not eight tiny reindeer pulling a sleigh, but a rather thick oversized paperback sized book called “Compact Classics, Vol II. On the cover was this lion, Buddha, a pig, and a couple of seashells. and a little inset box said, “Never be caught without something to read. Invest in yourself. Read the classics.” And along the botton of the cover ran a 3/4″ strip that said “more two page book summaries of all-time great books…plus much more”

       I picked it up and started thumbing through it,…..and I was hooked! Not just classic works of fiction, but all catagorized into genres, and otyher cool stuff, Poets and Poetry, Short stories, Judeo-Christian works, Western Philosophy, Quotes and Anecdotes, and even a literary TRIVIA section! It was 630 pages long and only $19.95, then I checked out the copyright and publication dates and they were 1992, 1993, 1994, and I remembered it was also Volume II, so I went to find a “Book Barrister” who checked the almighty Store Computer (which I believe is hardwired to a God of Books somewhere) and she gave me this look like when the vet tells you he is going to have to put your dog down and says, “I’m sorry, Volume I is out of print and this is the only one of Volume II we have in the chain.” Well like they say at Outback Steakhouse, “No worries mate”, and I bought the volume II and went home a happy camper, knowing I could read a two page segment and commentary on thousands of great books and then decide if I wanted to “invest” the minutes remaining in my humble life reading the entire book. YEA ME!!!

           But also being a nerd of the first order of magnitude , as soon as I got home I powered up the old PC, went directly to e-bay and typed in “Compact Classics Vol I”, ….and bang six hits, all used but there was one in an old book store in Virginia that was in “like new” condition, and the asking price was only $4.17, plus $2.95 shipping. I whipped out my credit card and now am humbly awaiting Volume I of Compact Classics at my mailbox within 10 days!!!

           Sorry, got to cut this short, I’m into a novel called “The Atlantis Code” by Charles Brokaw that just came out and I’m already into it almost 225 pages of the 348,…..so heigh ho, heigh ho it’s off to the gym and the treadmill I go. Get to kill two birds with one stone, read another 75 to 100 pages, get a good workout and finish the month of August having walked 135 miles,….tell me I can’t multi-task!

          Oh yeah, one other feature that only the Barnes and Noble “Nook” e-reader has, I can loan any of my books to anyone else with a nook and vice versa. Trying to build a base of nook users, (“Nookies”) and see about possibly starting a web site where “Nook” owners can register and put in requests for specific books etc from othe “Nookies” and we can “hook them up”. Sort of  one of those dating websites only for readers, maybe have a few forums as well. 

           “Seize the day, read a book”

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