100 Words, books, holidays, Media, Uncategorized

Library Emergency

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Overheard outside my library last Monday (the electronic book return was full/closed):

“Oh no – it’s a library emergency. My book is overdue.”

I was able to reassure her that a Monday holiday is the same as a Sunday… as long as you your book is physically inside the library before it opens for business next, even using the old-fashioned non-electronic book drop (which I was able to show her), you don’t get docked. She told me that she had kept it as long as possible so she could finish it before it was due.  I completely get it.

What was the last book you rushed to finish?

49 thoughts on “Library Emergency”

  1. Most of my reading comes from my own library so I don’t need to rush but when I get a book from the library I feel pressured to finish it as quickly as possible. Usually those books are ones that I’ve been waiting for so long that I’ve almost forgotten about them and lots of other people are waiting behind me.
    I think the last book from the library I rushed through was Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz.

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  2. I commented a while ago that I have stopped reading books for leisure. I don’t have an explanation for this. We gave away most of our fiction books to our local library used book store preparatory to our moving in a few years. There are some in the basement that I could drag upstairs to reread, but I don’t. I have also stopped watching movies. Hmmm. I have been thinking of renewing my library card, but it is only a thought.. I have a sense that my aversion to starting and finishing stories has something to do with stress from my work as a therapist. I am puzzled and trying to figure this out.

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    2. I had a similar thing happen midway through owning my practice. It was a feeling that my brain was just so full. But audiobooks met the need. I am now reading print books more again. I think my behavior was stress-related. But many of the narrations in audiobooks are so superb that I continue to enjoy that.

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  4. My latest was the mermaid and mrs. Hancock. It had a really good reviews but it was fairly long and I kept renewing it and renewing it and renewing it. When I started reading, it bogged down for me in the middle so I did really rush through the end because although I really wanted to see how she wrapped it up, I just wanted to be done with it.

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    1. I think my lack of enthusiasm for fiction stories has something to do with anxiety, anxiety for my clients, protecting myself from heartbreak when things for them go awry, anxiety about how their stories will end etc. I tell people avoidance leads to increased anxiety. Maybe I need to read fiction as a treatment for anxiety.

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      2. i feel that way about cool hand luke
        i hate to see him get messed up again

        i skipped some movie the other day got the same reason but i could watch coo coos nest a couple times and one of my favorites is a scorsese movie that starts going wrong and gets worse and worse
        after hours is the movie funny black humor

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      3. As time goes on I have different reactions to fiction. When I first read The Beans of Egypt, Maine, I remember loving it and feeling as though the character of Roberta Bean was almost akin to an adult Pippi Longstocking. Re-reading the book more recently, I found myself feeling very anxious for all the characters, Roberta in particular, and their poverty-stricken circumstances. I think I’m much less able, now, to perceive stories as mere stories. Everything’s more real and seems more fraught with danger.

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        1. that was my take too linda
          i enjoyed it but in a tragic rural upbringing sort of way like pat conroy who is one of my favorites or rick bragg its all over but the shoutin

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  5. Becoming by Michelle Obama.

    And the last one rushed to actually finish but didn’t make it was The Hidden Life of Trees, but at least I know what we’re talking about at book club. I’ll renew at some point because it really is pretty fascinating..

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  6. For me it was probably whatever homework chapter deadline was looming. Got through Econ chapter 22 and 1 thinking I was good but no, this week it moved right into chapters 2-6.
    Test isn’t until the 16th though. With tech all weekend and every night next week I’m not sure when I’ll get too it.
    A little at a time.

    Just ordered some mugs that say “I’m sorry for what I said during tech”.
    Anna and MIg will find that funny.
    It’s one of those ‘heat of the moment’ things… I always say “Nothing is personal during tech”.

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  7. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    The last book I rushed through was “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand. The main character was stranded on the Pacific Ocean between horrible events, and I just could not take the hopelessness anymore. The audio version of reading fast is speeding up the narration to 1.5 or 2 times normal. Even that was too hopeless, so I just skipped ahead, only to find the poor guy in a Japanese prisoner of war camp with a sadistic guard, so I skipped ahead some more to the rescue scene. Relief. I was so happy that the guy then had many years of a satisfying, non-tortuous, non-floating on the ocean life after that.

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        2. Neither did I of course. This was heartbreaking because I enjoyed Seabiscuit so much and was really looking forward to her next book.

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        4. Yes, I did. However some authors are much better at creating a visceral picture than others; sometimes I can read books with horrible stuff going on and sometimes I can’t. And since Unbroken started the horrible so early and I knew that there was the Japanese stuff yet to come, I didn’t think I’d be able to get through so I just quit.

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  8. Books, especially novels, often present us with characters who contend with great threats. Sympathetic readers usually respond by caring for the characters, even to the point of becoming anxious for them. Most readers experience relief when the characters eventually resolve the problems satisfactorily.

    But some people can’t enjoy that because they experience so much anxiety. Even a happy ending isn’t sufficiently reassuring. A member of the Blevins club was unable to read The Glass Castle. Her personal history made her so sensitive to dysfunctional family issues that she couldn’t tolerate the anxiety the book raised in her.

    Oddly enough, my dread about current political developments has made me so anxious in general that I’ve mostly lost the ability to read for pleasure. It has become difficult to have faith in the future. It has become easy to be anxious.

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  10. One of the reasons I am more engaged in reading than I am in television or movies is that, unlike television and movies and, for that matter current events, I control the programming. I’m not obliged to read anything in particular. I can read books that are, to me, as intriguing or enlightening or diverting as I choose. Why would that be stressful?

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  11. i am rushing through
    the life changing magic of not giving a f**k
    i had checked it out without being aware and have a limited time to finish so i’m on it
    i don’t like listening at 1.5x or 2x speed but have resorted to it

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    1. more like the guy at the end of the car commercials where the interest rates and other stuff they say real fast is not anything they want you to understand anyway

      not ideal for book listening
      1.5 of just a bit faster but 2x is too much for me

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  13. I recently had to return “Women Talking” by Miriam Toews to the library. It’s wait listed and I didn’t get through it before the due date. It was one I would read in fits and spurts – there were days I could only read a few pages before it made me upset and other days I could read for long stretches. Fiction based on a true story in a Mennonite community in South America. Even with knowing that there are parts of it I can only read a few pages at a time, I went ahead and bought a copy for myself. If I had to wait until I came up again on the wait list at the library, I don’t think I could stand it…

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  14. For what it’s worth, I think that current events, not just in the US but globally it seems, are so distressing, and seem to be spiraling out of control, that it’s really hard to maintain any semblance of emotional balance. I find myself unable to concentrate on anything, irritable with everyone, and wanting to slug people at the slightest provocation. Even ordinary choices are hard to make. I find myself unable to stay on task for any length of time, and because of my poor vision at the moment, reading a book its pretty much out of the question. I can barely make it through a lengthy recipe, for crying out loud.

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  15. I think I sorta rushed through the end of The Philosopher’s Flight when we read it for book club. I enjoyed it, though, so it wasn’t a slog. Mostly I don’t stress about finishing books. Within the past few months, the St. Paul library went fine free, so I don’t have any real library emergencies anymore, and the book club is pretty forgiving if I am clueless about what I was supposed to read.

    I do still feel better, though, if I manage to finish my books.

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