Bread Making vs. Book Club

Tonight I have a dilemma. I can go to a bread & chocolate making class that Damian really wants me to attend (his two favorite food groups are bread and chocolate) or I can go to Book Club.

And I actually read the book.

Until 2am.

In the bath.

My Obsessive Readers Anon. Support group tells me I have to stop admitting that I read for 6 hours straight in the bath. Ignoring my problems is a part of the recovery process . . . to let my past indiscretions with books GO and quit referring to them. Next month they'll teach me how to control myself around books.

OK, so enough baring my soul, the book is, "Standing in the Rainbow" by Fannie Flagg. I can't believe I never heard of this author until last month. I also can't believe I've read all her works in a month. She is a phenomenal author and I like her whole body of work.

That isn't always the case. For example . . . I read, "The Secret Life of Bees" a few months ago and LOVED it. So I checked out every book by the author and hated every other one. And I mean HATED them, especially "The Mermaid Chair".

But Fannie is special. She writes great books, generally clean and uplifting, and they are a great commentary on our society. She makes me laugh, she has made me cry and she makes me think. Of course, "Can't Wait to Get to Heaven" is still my favorite, but "Rainbow" is a close second. Probably because it's a prequel to my favorite! So when I saw the reading list for the Book Club and it included a Fannie Flagg for this week, I had to stay up all night reading it.

I've never been to an Official Book Club. My kids and I have brought home 50 or 60 picture books from the library and made a huge sheet tent in the living room and had a Book Club where we eat snack and read all the books at once (see, I'm breeding future Obsessive Readers Anon. members!) .

Sooo, I really want to see what adults do at one of these clubs. I hope it includes eating and visiting. I really don't want to hear what anyone else thinks about the book. What if they don't like Aunt Elner or the book? I might never talk to them again, and these are women I go to church with every week.

I'll go to the breads/chocolate class, and then sneak out and hit the book club. One starts at 6:30 and one at 7:30 . . . and if those women want to dissect this book, I'll sneak out and go back to breads/chocolates.

And now, I must reflect on my second obsessive book behavior. (The first being, staying up all night to read in the bath, in case you weren't clear on that). The second is that when I find a book I really love, I go check out EVERY book by the same author and read them all in a row.

My friend, Maggie from Mississippi . . . (OK, I use that term "friend" loosely because we have commented on each other's blogs, but she's a fellow Read-aholic, so that makes us friends, right?) Anyway, Maggie (http://www.maggiereads.blogspot.com/ ) mentioned this on her blog,

"Normally, I do not read the same author back-to-back. Being a librarian, it is important to experience all types of authors and genres. One might say, better to have a taste of an author’s writing than to spend valuable time analyzing his complete works."

But then, her post goes on to say that she enjoyed a book so much, she did read another by the same author.

Here's my point. I had great aspirations to be a librarian in Elementary School. But . . . after becoming a teacher and then a mother, I now have great aspirations to be the Story-Time Lady at my local library. I like costumes, I like puppets and singing and I really love reading picture books upside down with funny voices. It's the perfect career for me. And it's a once-a-week gig, so it won't interfere with my reading time. So Maggie, I must say,

"Normally, I DO read the same author back-to-back. Being a Story-Time Lady Wanna-Be, it is important to experience Obsessive Compulsive Reading to the highest degree. One might say, better to be drunk on an author's whole body of work, than branch out and possibly get psychological help."