I read or I bleed.

For many years now, my wife and I have gone to a reading group at our local Barnes & Noble. As a consequence, a lot of my reading material has been selected by somebody else. That has both an expansive quality about it and a limiting quality. Overall though, I am very happy to go and associate with such fine people who are well read and versed in society and life.

This month, our reading selection is Everything's Eventual, a Stephen King collection of short stories. Short horror stories, that is. I am not generally much for horror. I have enjoyed some of Stephen King's horror, but other selections of his favored genre, not so much so. My favorite selections that I've read so far from Stephen King include Misery, Dolores Claiborne, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and On Writing. So far, I have fully read two of the fourteen short stories. The first one is written from the point of view of a dead person in a morgue who doesn't believe he is dead. It is pretty interesting at first, then it wears on a bit, but eventually it turns gross in my estimation when King has the doctor, a woman, supervising the autopsy grab the guy's penis for leverage just before they slice him open and the first discover that he is still alive but has been bitten by some unknown snake, rendering him dead-like. After reading it, I felt like I'd been bitten by some unknown snake. The second story is about a boy who encounters death when he goes fishing. It, too, seems a little fishy.

Anyway, I enjoy reading. I wasn't much of a reader when I was young. There weren't any readers that I know of in my immediate family, or for that matter in the extended family that my family associated with. I suppose the kids I hung out with in the neighborhood probably did more reading than I did as a youth. As I grew up and started college, I began reading more and more. I still don't read as much as I probably should or as much as I think I would like to. However, I find myself often choosing to do something other than read. At least books. I do find myself reading news reports and blogs on the Internet probably more than I read books.