The Emerald Rose

My wife and I have always been “readers” initially me, then her. As I became more involved in business and all the other “clutter” in life, including business the need to learn various computer ystems and programs to avoid “obsolescence” I slowed down on the “reading for fun” scale.
Honestly how excited can you be about DOS, Windows, Excel, Word, etc. …but it was necessary. After my triple By-pass surgery and the need to “exercise” in 2009, I figured out why exercising was pure boredom! Unplug mind, engage muscles, was the mantra of working out! Can you spell death by being eaten alive by a single ant? Yuck,…slow and boring!
My wife had not said anything, but what ith a touch of arthritis, holding a book, and turning pages was getting really old. So for Christmas I bought her a Barnes and Noble Nook, electronic reader. She loved it would be an understatement, she started devouring books and authors, (a real T-Rex for reading). So I bought myself a Nook to take to the gym and see if it offset the being devoured by an ant syndrome. It worked. I was reading again, time on the treadmill passed quicker, (and I got healthier!!)
Now it has become as addictive as cocaine, (I guess,…having never tried it personally, but based on what I read about it.) Pretty soon my bookshelves began to fill up as did my Nook, early cloud technology. Then we both upgraded to a newer “Nook”, but I found out that I was really enjoying it!! Years ago the biggest authors I read were Robert Ludlam and Tom Clancy. Mostly because I was going to college nights, buried in reading for “work”, etc. But as I read more even newer vistas began to open up, new authors (with multiple books in a series with the same characters), and even some old authors whom I enjoyed like Leon Uris, Clive Cussler, and classics like Ayn Rand, and even Hemingway.
But as I started to work on a plan to “wind down” my worklife, I started reading more and experimenting with additional authors. One day I found out that there was another world of books available through Amazon’s new Kindle but one reader was enough,….until they came out with “apps” for kindle as well as Nook,…so I began to explore a few new avenues.
Unfortunately as an admitted “tech junkie” I got caught up in this “electrnic” reading phenomena. Pretty soon I had a couple of hundred books” in my library, but then it turned into the commercial addiction! Barnes and Noble, Amazon, a few other newcomers, etc. start targeting you. At first it was “ok”,…but pretty soon it was “Joe Blow has a new book coming out in 7 months,….reserve your copy today,…’click here’!”
“Oh yeah, I love his books, ….”click”, then next week it’s another of my favorite authors,….and then the week after that! So now I own 12 “brand new” books, by Authors I like and enjoy, that are sitting in my electronic “library”, ready to read!!
Time to turn off my e-mail device(s), and sit down and read. (I think part of my “excess” library” is the subconcious message that “You can’t take me back now God I still got 15 books I bought that I have to read first!”)
Anyone got a “Gone Fishin'”sign I can hang on the front door and a masseuse who can “exercise me” while I just catch up on the reading?? Oh yeah, and a dietician who can “feed me properly” so I don’t look like Jabba the Hut next year.
So who do you read and why do you like them? Please no literary psycho-babble,…who “trips your trigger” and keeps you up til 2 am reading?
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