walkitout (walkitout) wrote,
walkitout
walkitout

book geek observations

At Costco today, I met the sweetest book lover, an older woman who was looking at just about everything. I got slightly in her way to pick up Atul Gawande's latest (which I bought, even tho I was betting I could get it via kindle; I got it for a little less, tho). We started chatting. She said something about how there were so many great books this time, and she liked it when there weren't because she had so many at home to read. I said, I agree, I have shelves of unread books. Her eyes lit up, yes! I think we bonded over knowing that here was another person who doesn't have a few, or even many books unread, but far more than we were ever likely to get to. I added, but you have to have a lot of choice and she agreed with that. Then we fell to individual selections: she strongly recommended _Holes_ after pointing out the sequel, and encouraged me to reread Lois Lowry's _The Giver_ because books change so much when you read them at different ages. She said she'd just had a nice conversation with some teenage mothers about that book and how having a baby changed the way they thought about what they read. I knew here was another volunteer.

*blissful sigh*

I had to go, because T. was getting fractious, but heavenly to meet myself, only in a different body and at a different age, but oh so appealing (at least to me!) wherever I find me.

LibraryThing, on an unrelated note, is up to 30 users of the kindle tag. Off to do some research. What fraction of the US population reads 300+ books a year?
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