It's a character flaw, the way I read

When I get my hands a book I like, I read like an alcoholic drinks. Binge reading. It's not good. I get annoyed when people talk to me, I stay up all night, I'm cranky and mean in the morning. I consume the story in a matter of hours, so eager to get it into my brain that I often do so in a sloppy, careless way. There's no good excuse for it. Except that the books are so ... delicious.

I read when I'm on the elliptical trainer at the gym. I think it's a good plan. My office mate says that would ruin the reading experience for her. I think it's the only way to get through the numbingly boring exercise experience. It's far better than plugging in the headphones and watching whatever silly movie is on TBS on the dozens of TV screens around the room.

But then I suffer from can'tputitdownitis when I get home. I shower in a hurry and then get my still-warm, but clean, self into bed and read and read and read.

So I think it was maybe midnight last night when I finished Life of Pi. I loved it. The voice was endearing, the story compelling, the details of the impossible plot utterly real. Pi is a mystic, an engineer, a child, an observing scientist, a poet, an animal.

At the beginning of the book his story is described as one "to make you believe in God." I'm still turning that over in my mind after reading the ending of the book. I won't spoil it. But the ending had me tossing and turning. Thinking about truth, and good, and desire to believe. And the natural man, and the reality we live every day humans, surviving in our various ways. And how those two could ever fit together.

Go read it your own self!