Wednesday, June 8, 2011

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.

No comments: