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My Profile
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone... - 2009-11-05
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9:15 a.m. - 2008-04-03
So there I was trolling around the NYT website as I often do when I'm between word bursts and/or waiting for the dryer to buzz and I stumbled on this juicy bit of pluff. (For those who hate, hate, hate reading the link articles, it's piece on literary compatibility and our funny quick snap judgments about others' taste in books, especially in regards to dating.) I was amused by this. For I am surely guilty on all counts. Yet ultimately it worked out for me as it had for one of the quoted in the article- book compatibility is nothing compared to finding someone whose perversions match my own and that we can do a 7-hour roadtrip together and not come to blows. Mick reads constantly. (Okay, he zones out in front of Mission Impossible re-runs on American Life channel when they're on but otherwise he's reading.) In fact Mick reads way more books than I do. Though to be fair I spend all day trying to write the damn things so almost allmy waking time is immersed in words. Whether the words are coming in or they're going out is moot, wouldn't you agree? However, what Mick reads is straight up non-fiction. On our shelves are hundreds of car books, conspiracy theory tomes, anti-government paranoid rants, and his personal faves about UFOs, Bigfoot and 'unexplained' phenomena. *This claptrap is marketed as non-fiction, but Mick's reads are far more fairytale than hard-hitting investigative truth, IMHO. "Bigfoot came out of an interstellar orange hole floating near the tool shed! I can prove it because I found salt in the sugar bowl and the dog had mysterious runes clipped into his fur! See? Here's a blurry photo!" Ye gods. Aside from repair manuals, phonebooks and blogs I read nothing but stories that know they're stories. Can't be arsed to bother with anything that's not a ripping good tale. I get quite enough 'real life' in my real life, thanks. When I read I want outta here. I want to go places I've never been. Eavesdrop on conversations between clever witty people. Follow the clue trail to a murder. Ride a dragon. Be 18 or 78 or a guy. The occasional memoirs and essay collections that wander through my reading are always good stories even if they're technically non-fiction. So can a girl who revels in tales well-told share a reading lamp with a guy whose choices have all the literary merit of compost? Sure can. Don't know how it worked out for those folks in the article, but for us our schizophrenic library does us just fine, because when it's all said and done Mick's favorite writer is…me. Can't ask for more than that.
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