More books

While visiting South Padre Island recently, my family shopped at a couple different stores with "used books" sections. There is a funny thing that will happen when my pop and I are going through a smallish section of used books: whoever makes it to the books first starts on one end and the other one will start at the other end (that way we don't get in each other's way).

That's not the funny part. You see, even though my (borderline unnatural) love for books was fostered by hours of helping pop sort through his book collections; pop and I have (almost) completely different tastes in books and authors. So, as we're working our way through the books, occasionally each of us will run across a book that we think the other might like and we'll say something to the effect of "You might want to take a look at this one". I've figured out that when I see a book that I might want I will go ahead and add it to my stack because if I don't I won't be able to find it later. And I can always take books out of the stack.

The funny part is when pop and I pass in the middle of the book section, each of us with a stack of books. Despite the fact that pop and I maintain our unique tastes in books and authors, it will invariably happen that one (or both) of us will say "Um, were you going to buy that or were you just looking at it?" The other day I even talked up a book that I had noticed in hopes that pop would add it to his stack and lose interest in another one that he had picked up.

The upside of all this silliness is that it is a harmless and educational vice. Now if we only had time to read all these books we buy! Pop does much better at this than I do - Wednesday morning he was reading a book while sitting in the hot tub. I never have been able to do the "bathtub reader" thing.