The End of the Books?

The end is near. Yep, the end is near of being able to read two or three books a week, just for fun. It's become increasingly obvious to me, at least at this beginning stage of my legal education career, that I'm going to be reading a whole lot of not-for-fun books in the next few years. In plotting out my law school study program, I'm allotting 30 hours a week, six hours a day for five week days, to do the necessary reading and study. In addition there will be various lectures, conversations and discussions to absorb. Not much time in there for pleasant reading.

I'm going to miss it, too, for "fun" does not suggest frivolous, at least not in this case. Part of my reading is pure fantasy and escapism, part of it is to expand some of my horizons, part of it is to enjoy the pure beauty of words. I don't expect to get any of that in reading casebooks, briefs or texts, none of which have any pictures in them and none of them can be characterized as "fun" reading. Perhaps this sounds like whining, but I hope not. It's just a bittersweet goodbye.

Some good books have piled up on the coffee table, and I've pushed through them in the past week just to close out my not-read account. One of them is the Harlan Coben mystery spellbinder, "Just One Look", which falls into the Fantasy & Escapism category. Truth be told, I'd never heard of Harlan Coben and don't read many mystery books, but an article in the current Atlantic magazine http://www.theatlantic.com/200707/harlan-coben persuaded me to check it out. This book defines a "page-turner": I read it in one (late) night. Great story!

Several months ago son Jerry had recommended Kurt Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country", and since then (a) it has lain unread on the table and (b) brother Vonnegut has passed on to whatever his reward might be. The book defies classification, but I suppose we can call it a collection of mini-memoirs, a valediction, that is often clever, occasionally poignant, and scathingly on target: "The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."(p. 40) Thanks for a good recommendation, Jerry.

On the bottom of the pile was a book I picked up impetuously while wandering through Barnes and Noble, "Baseball Haiku". I've always been fascinated with the drama and beauty of baseball: the incredibly lush green field set in such a meticulous pattern, the hush that falls in the second or two before the pitcher throws the ball, the ballet of a 5-4-3 double play. To describe all that with the delicately powerful words of a haiku had never occurred to me, but this book is filled with them, like...

alone
in the autumn night
the home run ball

or

crack of the bat
the outfielder circles under
the full moon

It will be hard to give up books like these for the stirring prose of Somebody v. Somebody. I suspect I never will.