Fickle and juvenile

It might be kinder to say I currently have the attention span of an average five-year old ...

In the last week I have begun to read, and later returned to the circulating collection, no less than four different juvenile novels. I started the books with an open mind, moving outside my interest "zone" to broaden my reader horizons. However in each instance there was not enough in the book to entice me to finish. I took one to lunch three days thinking I could power through to the end; nope, nada, not going to happen. After struggling through two of the four I discussed them with the cataloging librarian who is a fantasy aficionado. She agreed that while they were perfectly acceptable books, neither was a stellar example of an exceptional fantasy novel.

Instead of thinking I am simply literature lazy and do not want to read something critically that is not to my taste, I prefer to say I am exercising my rights as a discriminating reader and choose not to finish. There are so many books to read (and so little quality reading time) that it seems foolish to force the issue. They are two very different things, reading for enjoyment and reading for work. That is why I rely on professional children's literature reviewers when selecting books for the library collection. An entire juvenile section full of only what I enjoy reading, no matter how eclectic my tastes, would be a poor example of collection development policy.

Also a contributing factor to the fickle-ness of my reading patterns is the humble realization that my brain is fried from several consecutive eight hour days of web page re-designs and is close to exploding (always messy) with the knowledge I have a long way to go before declaring the job finished. And for heaven's sake, don't even get me started on the short conversation I had with my boss regarding the soon to begin torture of the library web page re-design.

I could wax poetical about having only two days until spring break, but that's another post. Or, I could provide the information regarding how many days between the end of spring break and Easter break. Maybe I should describe in detail the number of days between Easter break and the last day of classes for this spring 2007 term. But, to do that I would have to admit a student worker supplied me with the information (I had no idea!) earlier today.

Then again, I could reveal it has taken me four tries to correct this post and it remains only boderline grammatically acceptable, possibly even less readable than those four books in question earlier.

Instead, I will pick a favorite book from my collection and just relax. As Scarlett says, "Tomorrow is another day."


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