I'm all 'Book'ed Out'

I never thought I would say this, but I am ‘book’ed out. 

I recently received a “preferred customer” catalogue from Christian Book Distributors. Usually, I longingly read it from cover to cover. I couldn’t bare to open this catalogue. 

Never in my life have I had so many stacks of unread books in my library. Over half of the books are signed by the authors, who are now folks in my contact files and friends. 

This feeling started this spring at the Church Library State Conference, three days of talking about books, a gym full of books for sale hosted by Lifeway and Barnes and Noble and tables of authors and their books. Saturday morning this booked out feeling came over me as I walked into the gym. I could not look at another book or speak to another author. Don’t worry, my trunk was full of purchases from the day before, but, oh, this was such a sinking feeling. 

I wish I could lay my hand on the cover and do a mind meld with the book, drawing the contents into my head. Now, it is not enough to read the book. I need to write a review for each book. And I want to write about the books. 

Yet, suddenly, I am back in 3rd grade. My teacher held a reading contest. To participate,     you read the book and produced a book report, which could either be written, drawn or given orally. My competitive choleric traits kicked in and I read up a storm. I quickly learned both the written report and the drawing required you to actually produce something, while the likelihood of giving an oral report was slim, since we never had any extra time in the classroom. You can guess how I filled out the index cards regarding the report type I had chosen. I not only won the contest, I won the joy of reading and the ability to find a way to use the rules to my advantage. 

Spending the last week at the hospital, away from my stacks of books, I discovered I’m not as booked out as I thought, I managed to order another stack from CBD’s MidWeek email. Oh, well...