I need something good to read!

I've never had this much trouble scrounging up a decent book before. In the break room of the lab, there is a huge cupboard filled with paperbacks and novels. There has always been something interesting in there. Until now. I sit crosslegged on the floor in front of our 'library' and reject one after the other. I'm officially sick of Nora Roberts books. They are so formulaic and the main characters are too perfect they make me gag. And the sex scenes just aren't good any more. I suppose I could pick up a John Grisham book, but I dunno how intrigued by law firms I can get. Everything else looks totally uninteresting.

I'm never without a book to read. I just silently flip out if I'm not reading something. I often am reading 2 or 3 books at a time. One's for the nightstand, another is at work, and I'll have another floating around somewhere.

Tim just picked up the paperback version of the 9/11 report last week. I don't hold a lot of high hopes that this is going to be a thrilling, captivating read. But I may look through it.

What have I got going right now? Well, I started plowing through '"And I Was There"', by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, U.S.N. Retired. This deals with all kinds of declassified info about Pearl Harbor and Midway, and basically describes how the Pearl Harbor disaster could have been totally avoided, if it had not been for Washington D.C. bureaucratic misinformation, overconfidence and bullshit. Kind of depressing. We just got caught with our pants down 3 years ago, and reading about how this happened 60 years ago doesn't fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings. No disrespect intended to Rear Admiral Layton, and everyone else who had a hand in this rather hefty tome, but it is a rather dry read. And all the departments and lingo of the military are a bit foreign to me. Still, I'm on page 93, so that is something.

I also have a novel called 'Cashelmara' by Susan Howatch. 5 months on the New York Times bestseller list, shouts the cover. However, the copyright is 1974!! Let's see, I'm on page 172 of that. I like historical novels, and this one goes back and forth between New York City, England and Ireland during the time of the Civil War. But it's so un-juicy, I had to read a paragraph over again to realize that sex had taken place. Sorry. I'm such a pervert.

And the third book, which I finished quickly (and happily) is a children's vocabulary book. From 1951...! The copyrights are 1940 and 1947. Why does a beat-up copy of 'Singing Wheels' by Mabel O'Donnell continue to hold a place in my book collection? Well, it's got that intriguing musty old smell. And it talks about food. A lot. And it's a piece of memorabilia from my grade school days. One day during recess, I was outside and I noticed a box full of stuff waiting by Mueller road to be thrown out. There were books in there. Who on earth would throw away books, I asked myself. I started paging through one of them, and decided to take it. The story is about a boy who joins his family on the prairie after they moved west from New York state. He stayed behind to finish school, and then took a stagecoach west. It must be set in Illinois because no recognizable landmarks are mentioned other than 'the big city by the lake, 40 miles away'.

Yes, it's written for gradeschool children, but boy, is there a lot of food in this book. Everything from the big mashed potato, roast chicken and pie feasts waiting for the stagecoach travelers to fish baked in fireplaces by native Americans (they called them Indians in the book) to harvesting maple sap and honey. Makes me hungry every time I read it. And it makes me curious to find more books about how the prairie areas were settled.

So this is what I'm reduced to, one extreme of reading level to the other, until I find something decent. Anybody have any suggestions??