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Take me out to the … library
Are the baseball playoffs eating into your precious reading time? Why not do as Stephen King does? During Friday’s Red Sox–Indians game at Fenway Park, Fox showed the author sitting in the stands reading The Ghost. In an interview with Chris Myers, King said, he “could read 18 pages between innings normally. But now that Fox is doing the games, I can read 27 pages between commercial breaks.”
Where’s the strangest place you’ve seen someone pull out a book?
Topic: Sports, WorldMagBlog
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back to top20 Comments to “Take me out to the … library”
1. While driving.
2. At a dinner party.
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In a dimly lit C-130 aircraft as we were en route to a drop zone. All the other paratroopers were snoozin’! But not that chap!
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My husband’s doctor speed walks (outside in all kinds of weather) and reads at the same time.
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One of the things I learned early was to always carry a bool with me. It drives my wife crazy (and I am always looking ofr jackets with big pockets.
When I ws a young gopher in my first stint in the bureaucracy – I got along at many other offices because when I got told to wait, I pulled out a book. That tells any clerk that you aren’t going away.
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Strangest place? Hmmm…I can’t think of one. A funeral I suppose, though I’ve never actually seen that. I just can’t think of any other place where reading a book would be “strange”.
I carry a book with me at all times. I read it while waiting at drive-through windows, while waiting in lines, sitting in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, and yes, at baseball games. I’m a season ticket holder to baseball games, so I go to a lot of games. There is a lot of “dead” time in baseball. We do all kinds of things while sitting in our seats at the ball park. We eat drink, talk, play “mound ball”, harass the grounds crew, play video games, update our cell phones, listen to other games, and read.
That reminds me, I think men have a special knack for sleeping and watching football at the same time. We know how to open our eyes a split second before the play occurs, and then close them as soon as the play ends. Unless it’s a super cool play – then we watch the replay. But during commercials, time-outs, and “dead” time, we can get a lot of sleep in. Women have yet to learn how to master this particular skill
Reading a book while driving is not strange, but it’s definitely dangerous!
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I actually see high school students reading for pleasure when the classwork is done for the day. Not for a book report or for some other class, but for pleasure. Strange indeed!
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church service
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I once saw some girls pull out their homework (and books) at a birthday party.
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In Portland a carnival worker was riding a horrific carnival ride while calmly reading his college textbook. Even when upside down he did not take his eyes off the book.
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Although I am not a librarian, I work in libraries. They have been overrun by computers, which is fine, although there are many people who use libraries for computers only, and appear to avoid books like the Peanuts comic strip character Pigpen avoided baths.
When the computers “go down” the libraries empty to look like a ghost town (after patrons first whine to employees with the sensible question–”When will the computers be back up?”).
There was a great cartoon once that showed a librarian looking down at a patron standing among rows of computers and say, “Books? Oh, this is a library. You’ll have to try a bookstore.”
One day I was walking through a library and was struck by a girl of about ten or eleven sitting quietly at a table reading a large and formidable looking book. (I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a Harry Potter book.)
I stopped and quietly stared in wonder for a few minutes, amidst the people using computers and the children alternating between playing games on computers or running around as if they were in a playground.
My three-year-old granddaughter has been raised so far without watching television or using computers, although she has now seen a few educational videotapes. (I think rare is better than forbidden, as the latter takes on a special allure.)
When she comes to visit the grandparents, she has a regular cycle of things she looks for, including blocks and train under the couch, paints and clay and felt pens at the kitchen table, and books. Who knows, 60 years from now or so she may be interviewed on the medium of the day as the “Last Reader in America.”
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The Harry Potter mania reached a new high/low, when we dragged ourselves out of the Kenai River in Alaska, having just ridden a boat a bunch of miles into the relative wilderness, and found a bespectacled girl sitting on a rock and reading whichever one came out in 2005.
In my own case, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night all the way into the operating room for minor surgery. When they put the sheet over me, they took the book out of my hands and put it on the lower shelf of the gurney–which made it very handy when it came to finish reading it in the recovery room.
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There was a great cartoon once that showed a librarian looking down at a patron standing among rows of computers and say, “Books? Oh, this is a library. You’ll have to try a bookstore.”
Then there was the one our school librarian had, that showed a little boy holding a book with an inquiring look on his face at the librarian’s desk. In the background are people using all kinds of audio/visual appliances with headphones, etc. The caption has the librarian saying: “It’s a book. It doesn’t have a switch, you just open it and read.”
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I believe I posted this on here a year or so ago but here it is again – fits in with Peter’s comment above:
Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device, otherwise known as the BOOK!
It’s a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It’s so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere–even sitting in an armchair by the fire–yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM.
Here’s how it works: each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. By using both sides of each sheet, manufacturers are able to cut costs in half.
Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The “browse” feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward and backward as you wish. Most come with an “index” feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.
An optional “BOOKmark” accessory allows you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session–even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers.
Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is the entertainment wave of the future, and many new titles are expected soon, due to the surge in popularity of its programming tool, the Portable Erasable-Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus…
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- in a middle school lunchroom
- during a sex ed class
- at a punk rock club at midnight on a Friday night
- church
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I had a wonderful OB, who spent a lot of time listening to his patients. Consequently he was always running very late. I learned to bring a book. So there I sat in that pathetic excuse for a gown on that… table… reading. Of course, the first thing we always talked about was my book!
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I saw that interview with Stephen King and was ROFL because I too have noticed that Fox has a very high percentage of commercials per programming time. Are there statistics somewhere on this?
It was especially funny since it was Fox who was interviewing him (big Fox logo on the mike) and also because you don’t have commercials at a live game. Obviously he was making a dig at Fox’s outrageous commercial time.
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My husband used to listen to books on cassette when we’d go shopping, and the kids were toddlers. I remember shopping for sewing material at the PX once (we all had sew-ladies to costum make clothes).
The fabric-lady commented, “Your husband looks so content. They usually hate this section.”
We both looked at him. The kids were playing loudly in the cart, I couldn’t make up my mind, and he was happily transported.
“He’s listening to a book on his walkman.” I told her.
She laughed out loud. “I knew he looked too happy!”
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*custom.
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Church. Oops I’ve done that. While grocery shopping. A great place to read in fast food restaurants with play places.
Anlir, that two mystery of men I don’t get; the sleeping while watching football and reading in the bathroom. It got to be a family tradition on Thanksgiving for the women to see how close we could get to the TV remote before the guys would all wake and shout “We’re watching that.”
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The doctor’s office is a great place to read a book while waiting.
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