The book nook

In our old house in Raleigh we had four Ikea Billy bookcases double stuffed with books. We got rid of half the hard covers and most of the paperbacks, which still left us with wall-to-wall books, but at least the volume of volumes was no longer breaking Billy's particle-board backs.
Now we have a book nook, which looks pretty spacious here, but is actually quite cozy. The book nook was the reason I wanted to buy this house. AnnaRay wanted the house for the wrought iron pot rack in the kitchen, which is funny, because all the pots in the kitchen are mine and all the books in the nook are Anna's. Well, not all of them. I have a few novels in there among the biographies, the baseball books, the books about war and the books about politics, the books written by journalists and the books about writing journalism and every book ever written about the Kennedys. When I finally got around to shelving these books the other day, it occurred to me that AR is a huge freakin' geek, and why, I wondered, is that always such a surprise to me?

I have my own geeky tendencies, to be sure. My absolute favorite book of all time is about the brain. But who doesn't think neurology is fascinating? Also, I do have more than my fair share of cookbooks, but is it geeky or just disturbing that I like to read them in bed?

Really I'm just jealous, because AR has read every single book in the nook, not to mention the stacks she's been getting from the library since The Boy was born, (the weekly Amazon.com deliveries were busting the budget,) and the Library of Congress worth of periodicals she goes through every week, (Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and our daily paper arrive at home; the rest she gets online and prints out to read in the tub. Or while blow drying her hair. Or while talking to me.)

Meanwhile, I feel pretty accomplished because I finished that haiku poem I started reading last week.

I sit in the nook
hoping to finish my book,
but instead I sleep.