Limitations: knowing them, and then abiding by them

I am a bookaholic.

I know this.

If a book is out that I want to read, I want to read it now.

If it is in the house, I want to start it now.

Once I start it, I find it Really, Really hard to put it down before I'm at the end.

I've learned this, the hard way, and so sometimes I'm able to head myself off at the pass (temptation, get thee behind me), as I did last night.

The story actually starts on Sunday, when I picked up Twilight to reread it so that I could then read New Moon.

Now, just as there are read-once-ers and rereaders (or, as a friend put it at the party last weekend when he looked at all my books, "Now, why do you keep them all?"), there are those who savor and those who gobble.

I gobble. I have been known to finish a book and not know the mechanics of how the good guys saved the victims from the bad guys, I was reading so fast. I usually reread less quickly, but sometimes the second reading grabs me just as much as the first, and that's what happened here. My, I'd forgotten just how ... mmm, Edward is. It doesn't surprise me that the author was greeted at a stop on her book tour by dozens of people chanting, "Edward, Edward!" (I also understand her feeling somewhat taken aback by that. As she pointed out, she didn't actually have Edward with her.)

I mean, yes, okay, Edward is a vampire. But he's gorgeous, charismatic, has a sense of humor, and is wildly in love with Bella. He saves her life, literally (and then tries to convince her that sure, he was standing right next to her before the truck almost ran her over). Of course, he could kill her very easily, but he has self-control. He may be able to pass for a high school student, but he died in 1918, he's had years to learn to control his strength.

Maybe you need to read the book to understand. Anyway, I raced through it, and was fully ready Monday night to read New Moon, but I didn't have it. Hmmm. That's a snag. Of course, that meant I did get sleep Monday night!

So, since I am counting my pennies right now, having just paid the quarterly condo tax bill (ouch), yesterday I checked the library website and found it was in at one of the branches and I could pick it up last night, oh joy! I did so, and got in the car kind of hugging it, then paused. And got out of the car and put it in the trunk.

This enabled me to get the things I needed to get done last night, done, one of them being get more sleep, because if I brought in it the house, I'd open it, and if I started reading it, All Would Be Lost (kind of like the Bruins lately). By leaving it in the car, I was able to pretend I didn't have it.

Tonight, though? Dude, I've spent too much time here already. (Man, that book is cold!)