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Reading surge

Something that happened last year almost happened again this year. After trying to finish one book for a couple of months, the next book I read took me only two days to finish.

Last year, I read Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking in one sitting on a Saturday afternoon. This year, after taking a couple of months to read the 1,153 pages that is The Stand, I read the 200-pager Carrie in essentially two days (I read the first twenty pages about a month ago while on a video shoot). What's going on here?

Too often, with the constant desire to work on my next book, surf the Internet, watch DVDs, and check out Facebook, reading often becomes reduced to a sleep aid. I like to read a few pages before I take my afternoon nap and before I hit the hay for the night. Reading makes my eyes relax most of the time, so that's how it can take me months to finish one freakin' book.

As I reached the final 200 pages of The Stand, I was determined to finish no matter what. With all these hundreds of pages of build-up to a big showdown in Las Vegas, I wasn't going to hold off on knowing how this all goes down. A charge ignited in me and I've kept going.

Over the weekend, I picked up some more books to read, in addition to my backlog of Stephen King books I want to read. Gimme Something Better is an oral history of a punk scene (this time, the San Francisco area), Runnin' Down a Dream is an oral history of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, The Clash is the story of the Clash in the words of the band members, and To Hell and Back is Meat Loaf's autobiography. (If this sounds like research for a certain book I'm writing, you're right.)

Let's hope this surge in reading will continue through the summer.

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