Partly this decision was to avoid the potentially enervating situation of getting to the bus station in the morning and realizing I had left the book I was in the middle of on the floor beside the bed after reading it late the night before. In order to face few, if any, sanity-sucking commutes with nothing to read, the commute books would simply never leave my work bag. I felt capable of keeping myself stocked and surrounded with enough books that some could be designated road-only and others home-only.
But another factor in the decision was my own curiosity as to exactly how many more books the new commute would afford me the opportunity to read. Long before this blog, and even before joining the GoodReads website (which, serendipitously enough, did happen within weeks of starting the new gig), I was obsessed with tracking tallies of my own pop culture consumption. I admit there was a part of me that expected that when people asked me about my new job, my commute would naturally come up in conversation, and when people would marvel at the timesink the commute represented and ask me how I was able to bear it, I would tell them I read a lot. I then assumed, after I had been working the new gig for six months or a year or whatever, people might then follow up that line of thought by asking, “Well, how many books would you say you’ve read on your commute.” And I wanted to be able to drop an exact count on them, like boom! 34 books. And those 34 would not be books that I read some of on the bus/Metro and some of on the weekends, at the beach on vacation, in the doctor’s waiting room, oh no. 34 books consumed 100% during commute time. So to that end, I started a page in a notebook listing the books I was reading on my commute, and as time went by GoodReads became a place to track all the books I’ve ever read in my life (or as many as I can or care to remember) and this blog became a place to really delve into certain specific ones, but the notebook is still maintaining the running commute count.
I will celebrate my third anniversary on the job next month. To date, exactly zero people have asked me the question which I have so painstakingly ensured that I have a precise and accurate answer for. Of course.
(The answer as of today is 161.)
Although, honestly, since the blush is somewhat off that particular obsessive rose, I have cheated a little bit recently, especially when I’m close to finishing a book on a Friday, and I would just as soon start a new book on Monday morning on the train than lug two books. In those cases I often polish off the book at home on Friday or Saturday and load a new book in my work bag so I don’t forget come the dawn (or pre-dawn) of the new work week. In point of fact, I followed that very model over this past weekend. Saturday afternoon, while the little guy was taking his nap and my wife was at work, I finished Marley & Me.
I should also admit that in addition to the aforementioned logic of book-toting efficiency, I thought it might be a good idea to finish Marley and Me at home because … spoiler? Do I really need to say that? It’s a book about the life of a dog. Inclusive. And they all end the same way. Life always ends the same way. Still with me? Right, so, I may be cynical about a great many things but I find my sentimentality easily manipulated when it comes to animals and children, which I suppose makes me pretty typical as it goes. And I know Marley & Me is a fairly well known best-seller which was made into a movie a couple of years ago (and I once again am maintaining my custom of jumping on things long after the cultural moment has passed) so if anyone on the Metro were to see me crying while holding that particular book they most likely would not be mystified by my defiance of social conventions, but still. Come on. Appropriate and acceptable or not, I just have no desire to get even the slightest bit unseemly whilst in commuter mode.
As I ran through all of those justifications Saturday while picking up the book, I decided that my over abundance of caution probably meant that I would make it clear through to the last page with dry eyes. I would see the predictable sucker punches coming and I would brace myself for them, had been bracing myself all along.
Or so I thought.
John Grogan, author and big dopey dog lover, managed to pull off a little bit of trickery by exploiting the double weakspot. Yes, I was touched when he said goodbye to Marley at the end of a typical Lab lifespan that amounted to a pretty idyllic existence. But after a couple hundred pages of the back and forth through loving and hating the “world’s worst dog” it really was the only way the book could possibly have ended. No waterworks for me. But then, Marley was brought home for burial on the family plot and Grogan’s children offered their own memorials. The kids up to that point were really only plot devices in the story of master and beast, a way of showing that Marley was a gentle giant good with kids, a way of explaining why the dog always managed to find extra food, etc. Suddenly in the last ten pages comes the sense of the kids’ relationships with their dog, full of the kind of undiluted love kids (and animals) have the most capacity for, so much so that Grogan’s oldest son signs his farewell letter to Marley “Love, your brother Conor” OH SWEET WEEPING FRIGGA did that get the waterworks going. Like, put the book down and scoop away handfuls of tears. So yes, I was grateful that played itself out in the privacy of my own home, thank you very much.
Obviously it all no doubt hit me harder than it would have, say, three years ago, now that we are raising a boy who adores both of our (his) dogs (especially the one he outweighs). I don’t look forward to the day when those goodbyes will need to be said, but I hope when such time arrives that everyone will agree that getting there was worth it.
Do you dare to read "Go, Dog, Go!" on the bus?
ReplyDelete