Appointment reading
I’m proud of myself. Reading is quite important to me, and I make much use of both the Multnomah County Library and its hold system. You can keep lists of books you’re interested in on-line, then have whatever you want to read delivered to whatever library’s convenient to you. Now on my list (cleverly called “My List”) is each of the seven volumes of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books. As time goes on, I will place each succeeding book on hold, wait for it, and read it, and thus experience the saga from beginning to end in a span of time that won’t be measured in years…or decades, which is how long some readers have waited for it to finish. I’m going into it totally virginal; I’ve never read a Dark Tower novel, and any references Mr. King has made to it in his other works would have whizzed past me like a supersonic ghost. I’m looking forward to this. The last time I did such a thing was in the spring and summer of 2003, borrowing each volume of Neil Gaiman’s epic comic Sandman and being so blown away by it that I spent the next year buying my own copies. My own library is enriched by this act: I try to buy mainly the books I’ll read again, and again, and again…