Do you ever wish you could stop time so you could sit and read uninterrupted? My reading pile has gotten so big in the past few days. I’ll never get through it all and that makes me sort of sad. I read Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, Thomas Chatterton Williams account immersing himself into the culture of hip-hop while young and how he got out of it. The subtitle doesn’t do the book justice. Williams book really is about discovering oneself and how hip-hop culture debases the black culture. His father, a sociologist by training, spent his life reading, teaching himself because no one else would. In the book, he tells his son that he never reads for enjoyment. He carefully underlines sentences in each book, magazine, and newspaper he reads. Thomas Williams finally figures out that he’s lucky because he can read for purely aesthetic reasons. I’m paraphrasing some really wonderful chapters here.

My point about stopping time is that Williams references reading authors like Kierkegaard and Dostoevesky and what he learned from these wonderful books. It made me want to go back and read them so badly. But each day, a new galley of something equally awesome has shown up on my desk. If I could stop time, I’d read them all. Right now, I have to pick what to read next: The Brothers Karamazov or Kraken by China Mieville. What to choose?

On the escalator up toward the terminal at the Atlanta airport on Monday, I suddenly realized that I only had half of a book to read with a two hour flight to Philadelphia plus a long layover and another hour or more flight after that. Shit. What should I do? As I reached the top, I saw that my flight was beginning to board. Shit! My head turned left and right looking for the ubiquitous Hudson News. Where is it?! To the left I see a store front called Buckhead Books. Even better! An actual bookstore! I rush over to see their wares. Shelves upon shelves of books from which to choose!

Wait, the fiction section is 3 bays, mostly face outs. The classics section has approximately 8 titles, 7 of which I’ve already read. The front table only seems to have Scott Turow, Michael Crichton, and John Grisham on it in massive piles. Shit! I scan the bestseller wall. It’s a lot of Christian material plus some of Sookie Stackhouse series. Augh. What about Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant? I tried reading one of her previous books The Birth of Venus, but I didn’t care for it.

Some will start calling me a snob here. Fine. Go ahead. I just wanted something a little more solid. I can read a John Grisham novel in about 2 hours. I need a thick book that can entertain me for at least three or more hours. So stop. I know my own tastes.

This is taking forever! I’ve got 3 minutes to pick a book, pay for it, and run to my plane. Finally I spot it. Lurking toward the bottom of the fiction section, which I’m back in front of for a second look I see Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Finally! Something I haven’t read and actually want to read. Panic over. I grabbed, paid, and ran.

I’m so glad I finally read this novel. It was so good! You might be laughing at me for panicking about all this, but I’ve said it before. Being without a book is torture for me. I know I’m not alone.