all booked up

I am having a major book dilemma. Today at the library I picked up a book I put on hold, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. This book has blown into my consciousness so many times lately, including the recommendation of a good, rational friend who told me to stop everything I was doing and GO READ IT immediately. I can already tell by examining the cover and smelling the pages, that I should have done what she said.

However, I have three other library books by my bed in various states of "being read," including The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew—Three Women Search for Understanding that I just started two days ago for a book club on Wednesday night and am, thus, trying to pound like a beer. I also have started Practically Perfect in Every Way: My Misadventured Through the World of Self-Help and Back, which is proving to be both hilarious and profound, but after a week I have only made it to page 30. And, on deck, a book from the Youth section—The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane—that a good friend told me she couldn't put down and secretly cried her way through. What to do? I guess a real crack addict would just stay up all night every night until she'd sucked them all down. And, no matter what the loyalties or responsibilities, she'd start with the best stuff first. But being an oldest child and a born-and-bred mother type, I have to have to keep my crack habit in check.

I have to finish (or at least try to finish) the book club book (especially since I recommended it). It's got a good personality but it's not the hot guy in the room. I probably won't be able to resist flirting with him a little, thumbing through his pages, skimming his first chapter, reading his jacket copy. The truth is, I should have never brought him home. Not yet. I should have left him on the shelf until I finished what I already started. Instead, here's what will happen: I will half-read The Faith Club, read 20 more pages of Practically Perfect and never even crack Edward Tulane before I have to return them all to the library (at least three days late). Then, after spending two weeks trying not to read or think about A Year of Living Biblically, I will inhale it all in one night. I know I should save myself the grief and read the damn thing right now. But this is just the way it has to happen. I can't avoid the dilemma, and I can't keep myself from trying to be responsible, but in the end I'm just a crazy crack addict. My jonesing will get the best of me and I'll forsake precious sleep time, lucrative work time and the peace of mind that comes from a tidy house while I spend hours totally absorbed in this book, the whole time wondering why the heck I ever waited.