I am thinking I’ll get a little brass plague made: This fodder for hours of reading pleasure made possible by a generous Kristina grant. I’ll put the plaque on big shelf that will house the books Kristina has given me. It is fitting that one of those books was So Many Books So Little Time. Sara Nelson begins her book with a description of the bookshelves made by her husband for her own extensive collection of books.
Sara set herself the task of reading a book a week for a year and writing about it. It sounded like an interesting project. I mentioned the book to Kristina and she bought me the book, which I tossed on the pile and forgot about until I saw Sara on Book TV last weekend.
When I first began to read I felt like I’d met a new friend, someone who shares my love of reading and has the need for a pile of books in every room. Some one like Kristina. And I enjoyed most of it. By the end I felt like I had gotten to know Sara, her husband, her son and a few of her friends. And I have a book list that is now greatly expanded.
But Sara and I read differently. Nowhere was that more apparent than in a chapter she writes about Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential. As it turns out Sara was “the chubby daughter of an extremely weight-conscious mother.” She says it her relationship with food is fraught with trauma. Her fat phobia in this chapter made my head hurt. She is funny. And self-aware enough to know that she lacks perspective in this area. She goes on to write about Bourdain and his bad boy toughness. I still haven’t read Kitchen Confidential. No particular reason. In part I feel like I don’t need some arrogant man telling me about what it’s like to work in a kitchen. I’ve lived that book. But if I owned the book I would eventually read it.
Maybe I need to call Kristine.
If I let fat phobia scare me off I’d hardly have anything to read. Sara reads more fiction than I do. So we might not be the best of friends but I did enjoy most of her musings on the life of a reader.