Following my friends' eloquent paeans to books over the weekend (Néa's exposition of her and Johan's voracious reading habits, and Watty's discovery of a fascinating-sounding bookshop in Chester) I should perhaps explain why I have nothing on my reading list at the moment.

The short answer is that I just haven't been reading - now is a time of doing, it seems. The time I would usually use for jamming words into my brain has been taken up with writing thank you notes, completing my travel journal, and writing code for the Lock Cup pages that have been requested. I am glad that I have at least been writing in place of reading (as opposed to watching telly), but there are books to devour still and I look forward to getting to them.

Having said that, the "not reading" state has persisted for a few weeks now - we took some (close your ears, Néa) disposable books with us on holiday: ones which would occupy us on the planes and trains without being books we would feel obliged to carry home with us. We didn't even open them. Indeed, almost none of our time in Italy was spent on anything but honeymoon things: journalling, sorting memorabilia, figuring out what to do the next day - all of this was going on, but very little fictive reading.

So, when we ran out of room in our bags we left the unused books behind in our hotel room. Whether the staff or patrons of the Albergo Lea in Siena felt any benefit from this gesture we do not know; what we do know is that we were far more comfortably able to pack and lift our bags after that!

Posted by Dunx at April 28, 2003 02:25 PM