I took a quick trip to Portland last weekend. While I was there I went into a few used book stores and bought some books to read on the long drive back. I was riding with my wife and Mother-in-law, both of which enjoy driving as much as I don't.
Conversation was interesting but they got tired of me pretty quickly. They would sit for hours trying not to talk in fear that if they started a conversation, I might try to get involved. I was glad I bought so many books.
I put my headphones and switched it to my Artist list and listened to all 17 Dave Matthews CDs randomly while I read from my books.
Fiction has never been my thing. I enjoy reading non-fiction, mostly history and political commentary. I was all set with two Ann Coulter books, Give Me a Break by John Stossel, the Ronald Reagan biography A Different Drummer by Michael Deaver and a great collection of essays by Ayn Rand.
What I was reading wasn't that important. What was amazing to me is how deeply I got lost into everything I read. I was almost half way through four of the books by the time I got home and I felt like I had really accomplished something and learned many things about people, philosophy, government and economics.
Now, I am back in the real world where that stuff is all useless on a day-to-day basis and it is a little upsetting. It is always hard getting back to work after a vacation, but it is even more difficult getting back to work with about 1000 pages of new information stuck in my brain that I will never be able to use as a computer guy.
Reading, it seems fills ones mind with information, knowledge and an ability to think that only frustrates the reader since it is hard to find others who also read. You know how you feel when you see a great movie and you try to tell everyone else about it. No matter how much passion you put into your description, no one ever understands how great the movie was. Once they have seen it they don't think much of it because you spoiled all of the good parts.
Reading books is a lot like that only worse. I have to wonder how different the world would be if most adults would read a 300 page book every few weeks. People would probably be more educated, more conversational and much more capable of thinking for themselves.
