Pure sweet indulgence

Four hours. Four luxurious, indulgent, wonderful hours. Would have been more but Cody showed up and got antsy because he wanted to get to his take-home final (how fun is that?).
The only thing I ever spend four hours on these days is work, sleep and house projects. I don´t have too many four hour bike rides, four hour hikes, four hours of laying in the sun, four hour movie marathons, etc. But today I took a long, lovely four hours to check out one of St. Louis´s best events - the Metro St. Louis Book Fair. They shut down the ground floor of a parking garage at a huge mall, get over a million (per their advertisements) donated books and sell them cheap - most paperbacks (and a lot of hardbacks) are $1, though some are .50 and some are $2. I spent hours walking up and down all the aisles of tables reading all the titles and authors - and that was just the Fiction section. If I had a photographic memory I´d be insanely smart right now and could tell you almost any book in the English language and its author. I promised myself I would be in no rush and would really take my time and really enjoy looking at all the titles, see who has written what recently, look at the book art, look at the awards and who they went to and really enjoy all the books. I was on a mission, not only to find the regular good books that I´m always searching, but to expand on my collection of Pulitzer prize winning books. So I came prepared with my alphabetized list of Pulitzer winners and went searching. I actually found a good number of them and a good number of Oprah´s Book Club books. Before I am tarred and feathered for alleging to be an intelligent reader and also looking at Oprah books (which one would assume are stupid for the masses), theyŕe not as bad as you might think. I´m certainly not a ¨Itś 4 o´clock whereś everybody gone? Oprah´s on!" fan (does anyone remember that commercial?). I hold no special feelings for her nor do I hold any ill will to her. She comes on while I am at work, same as Judge Judy and The Price is Right. BUT I must say she (or more likely her staff of intelligent writers, producers and special ¨book club¨ marketing employees) does pick some pretty good books. Sure there are some ¨for the masses¨ crappy reads, but I think there are some of those on every book list ever. But for the most part, she does pick good books, with good social redeeming values (not John Grisham - while heś a nice, fun, easy read that I occasionally indulge in myself, I am certainly not a more intelligent or better person for having read those 600 pages). So, yeah, I found some new Oprah books too - she has Faulkner on her list for heavenś sake!
Anyway, after about four hours of my peaceful rambling, Cody showed up, helped me look for a few books (I put him on the hunt for Updikes´ ¨Rabbit¨ books) and then he drug me out of the cavernous Fiction section and we wandered the other 300 sections. He found some great business books and a few German books, as well as an entire Learn German tape set for $10 (more then I would have paid but he has a tape player in his car still). We came away with a ton of good finds - for CHEAP! Overall, it was highly motivational, relaxing and energizing all at the same time. So then, of course, I had to come home and rearrange our book shelves to fit the new books. One of my life goals is to have a ¨library¨ in a house one day. We sort of have that now - we have a living room that doesn´t have a TV so we just have couches and bookshelves - like an old formal living room or a sitting room - but I like to call it my library too. So the big issue tonight was what book to start on. I fail to mention that I have a miniature bookshelf on my dresser in our bedroom with about 12 books I am ¨currently¨ reading. I still picked out a new one for today. Itś not an Oprah book or a Pulitzer - itś The Memory Keeper´s Daughter by Kim Edwards - some lady that I was talking to looked at my books and said I might like this one so I bought it. We´ll see. . . . :)