Haiku

Tender food morsels
Mute Clams wishing they could sing
Bluegreen puppies dance

Literary Extinction

I've titled this blog after a book I just finished not reading. I put the book away, about a third read and with a barley broken spine, to linger forever on my "almost read" shelf, which is becoming so weighty that it threatens to splinter like balsa wood and break through our second-story ceiling. "My goodness," the contractor will remark when he comes to fix the damage, "did a meteor hit this room? Was there an earthquake? Are we in New Orleans?" "No," I'll say, "it was those damn books."

It's not that it wasn't a good book. In fact, it was one of the most compelling books I've not read in quite a while. The subject matter, island biogeography, is right up my alley, and the author, David Quammen, is one of the best scientific journalists of the day. His prose is graceful and engaging and reveals a powerhouse intellect. There's a lot of brainpower packed into that diminutive cranium of his. (No kidding-- the picture on the book jacket makes his head look like a hairy grapefruit.)

The book was a gift from a friend of mine who shares an interest in biology and evolution, and when he gave it to me I was eager to read it cover to cover. But then it ended up sitting somewhat ignored on my bedstand for over seven years. What little I had read in those years was fascinating, but every time I picked it up, all I could do was limp through it. The book slowly became the red-headed bastard stepchild I kept locked in the basement. (My apologies to those of you out there who are, in fact, red-headed bastard stepchilds kept locked in the basement. Oooooh...this is awkward...) I finally acknowledged that the situation was hopeless; I wasn't going to be reading this book. But why? What went wrong? Was it FEMA's fault? And what's that scratching I keep hearing on the basement door?

Here's the deal: this book has lots of pages. And it's smart. Really smart. It's also green, by the way. To read this book I had to think, consider, and contemplate. I had to chew on, digest, and ruminate. There was simply too much cud for this Holstein to chew. Put another way, reading a book like this is so hard and takes so long.

I'm embarassed to admit this, but in a world of brain-candy fluff, sound bites and RSS feeds, it's hard not to become accustomed to McNews-and-Information that's served with special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun. That's all I have time for. Making a commitment as solemn as my marriage just to read a book isn't in the cards for me. Don't get me wrong--I love this book, but I'm not in love with it. I told it, though, that I'd still like to be friends.

I do plan to eventually read this book, assuming I can locate it among the debris when our second-story ceiling collapses from the weight of all those unread books. I won't tell you how it ends, but I strongly suspect the Dodo goes extinct, its song forever lost to the sound of CNN Headline News dumbing me down. Which is fine, as long as I don't get special sauce all over my shirt.