SubscribeAnother week, another bunch of pages read. I’m still working on David Sedaris‘ When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I’m in the middle of the 10th short story in the tome.
I consider myself to be a reader. I read just about every day – a few pages on the train on the way in, a few pages on the train on the way out…I read. It passes the time and I enjoy it. Admittedly, I also listen to music on the train – while I read. Maybe it’s a bad habit, but it’s a habit, nonetheless. When I’m interested in what I’m reading, the music is more background; it’s something familiar to have as a soundtrack to my commute. When I’m reading something significantly less interesting, however, I’m more apt to catch myself singing along.
Sedaris’ stories are interesting. For me, they’re not the laugh-out-loud funny as they tend to be billed, but they’re certainly interesting…compelling, almost. I imagine were I to hear David recall the story, himself, they would be uproarious.
He often tours doing whatever it is a neurotic author does when booked at the same theater where I’ve seen Brian Wilson, Kevin Smith and Howie Mandel (it was a decade ago…forgive me). I always have it in mind to get tickets and go, but I can never seem to afford them on the day of the engagement’s announcement, and the tickets are always sold out by the time I’ve scraped together the bread.
So perhaps it’s my fault that I don’t find myself laughing. Perhaps 7am on a commuter train isn’t the best setting to fully soak in the wry wit. Yet here I sit or, rather, there I sat, reading…engrossed.
About a third of the way through the book, I imagine I’ll hit the two-thirds mark in about a week and, predictably, grow bored with the medium and switch back to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, hopefully to finish that book before doing the same to Flames. Such is my pattern. One page at a time, I soldier on.
You ever feel like that?