Despite the fact that I have aspirations to do some serious Alt-F4 pertinent reviewing, I am taking the opportunity to read fiction as it comes up. My wife has been a reader of James Patterson and he is a prolific writer. His books are also very quick to read. When I was traveling heavy, I would take a book and finish it before I got back fro my trip. I kind of lost track of where I was in order of the various series that he has.

That tradition still follows me though. Most of my reading happens when I am away from the home. Mostly because when my head hits the pillow at home, I am out. Last weekend, we were at the library looking at the local garden club’s plant sale. But, the friends of the library were also having a book sale. There are some books that I am looking to read like Fahrenheit 454, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, etc. I didn’t find any of those but some fiction that I was interested in. And, they were in the free box.

In not too many weeks, we are on our way to Spain. That is going to be a long plane ride. So, ideally I can bring a long book. I found the perfect one ”The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown. It is almost 700 pages and light enough that I don’t have to concentrate on every paragraph. Plus it is entertaining and thought provoking.

When I first left my job, I started checking out books at the library and Dan Brown was one of the authors I read. ”Angels and Demons” and ”The Davinci Code” were two that I enjoyed. I also read some of the books that I want to review as well. So, in a roundabout way the two are related.

I also got another John Grisham book. I am not as excited about it but my son was. I made him a deal that if he would read it as well, I would take it. It was free after all and it will be worth the time, meaning I will get more enjoyment then other things I could do with the time, particularly on an airplane.

The third book, ”The Song of Solomon” I am finishing up. My son bought it for my birthday and it is a little meatier than I was anticipating. I suspect that this was someone’s college literature assignment with a bunch of notes in the margins. By their assessment, this has some religious correlations. I am not sure that I buy that assessment. Maybe I will review it some day, I finished it on my flight home.

Speaking of which, I took an informal poll when I was on the plane and I observed that almost every person was watching the on board entertainment system if not sleeping or playing games on personal electronics. I saw many people with a book in hand or nearby, but not a single one of them actually reading. I guess what I take of that is given the choice, people would rather watch a screen then read their own selected book. I myself usually flip through the selections and decide that there is nothing that catches my eye and then open my book.

End Your Programming Routine: I realize that I have always been a little more of an odd duck. My preference to books over movies go all the way back to childhood when our TV time was restricted but reading time really wasn’t. I did enjoy spending time with my boys browsing over all of the used books and they picked out some so I feel like there is a little bit of my oddness in them too. I guess in some small way, I feel like it bonds me to them even if we don’t share the same degree of passion.