Insomniac Ramblings

Lately, insomnia has been haunting my nights. I'm not quite sure why, since I've never really been a sufferer of that particular affliction before.

Since I'm still awake, I figured I might as well write about something.

I think my adoration of Kristin Chenoweth is fairly well documented by now, so you'll probably understand how excited I was to read about her upcoming memoir, A Little Bit Wicked. I'd actually read about it last summer but I hadn't heard much about it since then until I saw an article today about some of the more, uh, interesting moments that have happened in the theatre.

It's coming out on April 14th and you know I'll be all over it!

One of the best parts about working in a bookstore is the discount, of course. One of the worst parts about working in a bookstore, though, is also the discount! The result so far is eight overflowing bookcases here in my apartment and a significantly larger portion of my check given back to the company than I'd ever have if I worked in any other kind of store.

I read something recently about a man who had so many books that they lined every single wall, in every single room and hallway of his rather large house and he'd still had to have a shed of sorts built in his back yard to house the overflow. Sometimes I wonder if my own future will look at all similar to that!

Thinking about my own ever growing book collection doesn't even take into account the books that my future partner, at the moment completely hypothetical, will bring to the relationship! There's a great essay in one of my favorite books about the love of books, Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. It's called Marrying Libraries and is all about her and her husband having to combine their separate libraries, decide how to organize the books, and choose which duplicate copies to say goodbye to.

It would probably seem silly to anyone who isn't a big book person, but it's so easy to get attached not just to the wonderful words between the covers, but to a particular copy of a book that can hold memories of when and where you bought it and first read it, of the person you were at that time in your life.

I can't imagine ending up with someone who isn't a book person to some extent. The romantic in me dreams of leisurely Sundays spent with our noses in our books and discussing what we've been reading.

I see that sort of relationship now and again at work, in couples who come in together for books. It always makes me smile when one will ask the other "Have we read this yet?" They're usually older and so far always heterosexual, but it still proves that it's possible!

Of course, it's silly to place any kind of restriction on who you'll love. I'm sure I could be equally happy with someone who wasn't a book person, I just wonder what we'd talk about as time went on. I think all relationships need that common ground, that bond over something beyond just the fact that you love each other.

I'm rambling on. Blame the insomnia.