Lessons

Now that I am starting to recover from the spiral of shame my earlier confession brought on, I have been wondering if I should be taking a different approach to my little "problem".  Find the silver lining as it were. If I could find something worthwhile to be gleaned from these so called "books" then my compulsion could just be looked on as another way to keep my brain from aging. You know what they say-Never stop learning! To this end I have been reflecting on the book to which I alluded a few days ago.  A few things I learned from  To Tempt a Texan:

1.Yelling "calf-rope" means surrender to a Texan. I know I got this one right because it was mentioned at least 75 times. Also something Texans NEVER do. Ever.

2. The only way any respectable woman makes any reference to booze is by calling it demon rum and repeating the phrase "lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine".

3. Apparently, you can take the gal out of Texas but you can't take Texas out of the gal.

4. If you're clever, the only possible name for a cook on a ranch is Cookie.

5. You can get a man to do absolutely ANYTHING if you withhold sex and/or the possibility of seeing cleavage when they drink beer. I wish somebody had told me this one 15 years ago.

6. All prostitutes in the Old West were really just nice girls with hearts of gold that bathe all the time and don't like dirty cowboys.

7. It isn't possible to use the word loco too many times when writing dialogue. This will come in handy if I ever write my own novel.

8.  The only prostitute in the Old West that didn't have a heart of gold was dirty and constantly walked around in a soiled wrapper.

9. All saloon owners really are just well behaved gentlemen that secretly yearn to be artists.

10. All librarians are unattractive old maids that do nothing but fantasize about being seduced by handsome rogues.

11. If you are a proper lady and you wish to convey your displeasure with something, the only option to you would be to say, "outrageous!" or "disgusting!'. All. The. Time.

12. You can tell if someone is speaking English as a second language because they will always say "yes?" at the end of every sentence.

13. Texans are stubborn. It bears repeating. Over and over and over... and over and over again. 

My 12 steps

Hello. Feels good to finally be here. I'm Shauna and I am a compulsive book finisher. Thank you. I realized this week that it is time to admit I have a problem. I hit bottom this week reading a bathtub book. Sorry. I'll back up. FYI, when I am feeling too creaky I spend a decent amount of time in the bath. This can get very boring so I go to the D.I. or whatever and get cheap books to read. The rules on bathtub books are as follows : 1-They must be cheap.  2-They must be light enough to allow me to hold them for long periods of time.  3-They must(most importantly) be the kind of book that I can drop in the water and just move onto the next one in the pile without too much concern. I try to avoid the seriously bad ones like Harlequins and the like but will admit to reading some that are so bad they make me laugh. It was this week that I realized I have allowed this habit to go too far. This particular bathtub book was not laughably bad, just bad. I started it in the bath one night but found that I had this compulsion to finish it the next day. Now with a book that size it should have been a few hours at most. It took me 2 more days to laboriously work through it. This is when I realized I had really hit bottom. If I couldn't stop myself from finishing this piece of drivel then what was next? Harlequins with titles like The Sheik's Virgin Bride? Where would I allow myself to go from there? Inspirational romances? Self-help books? Joyce Carol Oates? Or, heaven help me, Oprah's Book Club? Shudder. So here I am to confess and ask for your help in working my way through some of the 12 steps to Walking Away from Bad Literature.