Reading Is Sexy

I love books me, always have. I don’t read nearly enough these days on account of the small fact that I know everything anyway so why bother aye?

But you always read on holiday don’t you? Several books usually and in such quick fashion that you’ll soon forget what it was that you read. It is thus, essentially, a time wasting exercise but very much a time honoured one so we all do it.

What people have in their bookcase of their bach or holiday home that you’ve rented is always an eye opener I find. Usually it’s the age old stock standards; Readers Digest, a few classics, a bit of romantic fare and if you’re really lucky, some Commando comics, which are the shit and it’s a shame that no one stocks the case with them anymore. Mind you, some bugger like me would pinch the lot so it’s probably a good thing they don’t.

Our latest gaff had a mixture of pretty much three genres; surfing material, guides to countries they’d visited and NZ House & Garden magazine. Clearly we were guests in the home of people who have surfed the world looking for the perfect duvet and drape combo.

Their DVD collection was equally as condense; almost every Tarantino movie and Season One to whatever of Outrageous Fortune. They also had a bit of a hard on (inter racial) for Richard Pryor and Chris Rock so needless to say with three kids in the house we signed up at the local Video Sleazy and rented some family fare, like Summer Heights High.

I read three books whilst away and enjoyed them all but I’m pretty sure at some point I just got in the zone and won’t recall big chunks of them. Which is how bullshit starts really doesn’t it? Someone reads a book, forgets most of it but drops some gem of wisdom in a social setting that is pretty much made up with the caveat at the end “I read it in his book”.

Then you have to check Wankipedia to corroborate whatever it was that Tim Tim Nice But Dim waxed on about that one time, which of course is contributed to by people, who read, wait for it, books. Sure, they list them as reference points but are their recollections any better than my speed reading three in a 10 day period?

And let us not forget that it was Smarty who gave a party and no one came.

I only read nonfiction which makes me sound like a complete wanker but seriously I do. Harry Potter books aside (and they made movies of them so they must be true) I haven’t read any fiction since about the age of 16 and I can’t really recall why I stopped with the made up stuff. Probably because of some grossly inadequate sexual experience I had with one actually. Nonfiction story of my life.

If it hasn’t actually happened then I just can’t contemplate wasting several hours on it. You might as well tell me the contents of that dream you had last night for all the factual content I will get out of a story, so I just don’t bother.

Not everything nonfiction though. Our holiday home did have Lance Armstrong’s book on the shelf and once I had finished my pile considered, albeit for a moment, reading it. But then the Tour de Pharmacy is such a sham of an event I reckoned it’s actually a work of fiction that he won it so many times so I left it where it was.

I must have got desperate though because I did read – and I use the term generously – the wife’s Woman’s Day. Honestly there is more factual content in junk mail than that shit.

That’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

My holiday reading...