Bookworm

When the Sony Walkman arrived in the early 80s, it felt like a miracle. Walking to work with The Smiths or Big Country in my ears was heaven on earth, and the perfect preparation for the fray that awaited me: entitled solicitors on one side, recalcitrant civil servants on the other.

It also got me running on a treadmill at the gym—something I’d never done pre-Walkman and never did again after a guy approached me one day to announce that he, along with the rest of the men in the gym, had been staring at my arse through a hole in my leggings as I ran. I fled home, inspected the leggings, and found no such hole, at least without the aid of a magnifying glass. How closely had that guy been studying my rear end? I was gorgeous, of course. So who could blame him?

Anyway, enough about my posterior and back to the matter at hand. I did try listening to a few “books on tape,” as we called them back then, but the pace was slow and my mind wandered. I much prefer the physical object, bought not on line but in a bookshop. I love the ritual of choosing, holding the books, reading the blurb. You don’t get that experience with audio books.

My parents ran a secondhand bookshop for a time so I was always a big reader. Although I once read a great deal of philosophy and ethics, these days my tastes are far more lowbrow: murder mysteries and thrillers. Here’s my current to-read pile.

Living in the sticks as I do, when I make it to a bookshop I tend to stock up enough to last me a while. And, it is a truth universally acknowledged that one can never have too many admirers or too many books.

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Posted in response to galenkp's weekend experience
prompt asking ' Would you rather read a book or listen to one as an audio book and why?

Images are mine