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I woke up at the unholy hour of 6:30, and decided to read my birthday present from my brother (Wyrd Sisters). When I looked up again at 8:15, I had to run to the shower. After I got out, I pulled my still-wet hair up into a twist and dressed hurriedly.
Just now, I let my hair out of the barret and...oh dear.
If my instincts are correct, this is the crowd of whom to ask the following question:
Have you ever done anything somewhat dumb because you were lost in a book?
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I forgot to rinse out conditioner once. I don't recall if I had a good excuse or not. Or even a dumb one.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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When I was in middle school, the kids used to tease me because I would get so caught up I would smile, laugh, frown, and mouth words along with the characters in the stories.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I once exited the plane in the wrong city because I was lost in a book. That's not the problem. The problem was that I didn't notice I was in the wrong city for over an hour.
There just has to be stories out there.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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When I was going to college I car pooled with, yikes, my parents. They worked in town and we all lived 40 miles out of town.
I would have an hour or so to kill after class, but before it was time to go and pick them up. I would spend that time checking out the books in the bookstore.
This was long before Barnes & NOble made it OK to read books you were not buying.
There were several occasions when, in the quiet store, I would burst out laughing at something in a Xanth book or a Robert Aspin book.
This was not appreciated by the bookstore staff, or the other customers.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I get told I'm a facial person. I apparently use my face a lot in my daily life, especially my eyebrows. I'll talk to people and gesticulate, but I'll always always use my eyebrows. This happens when I read as well.
Example: I'm in Greece on a bus from Sparta to Pylos. It's not a short trip, so I have a book and am fairly engrossed. I'm sitting towards the back of the bus, and reading reading reading. I come across something disturbing and make a face. One of the girls in the very front of the bus just happens to catch that motion and bursts out laughing. I don't notice - I'm still reading. That night at dinner, I'm the subject of much mockery. Jerks. Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Reading while walking with your nose in a book is an art form. I think I'm actually less klutzy while doing this than I am while walking normally. My mom would take me to the grocery store and I'd have to track the cart out of the corner of my eye while I read. Sometimes I started tracking the wrong cart, and would realize I had no idea where she was.
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I have missed my bus stop, but never got off in the wrong city.
I got in trouble in school a lot for having a book hiddden behind my text book. And most of my teachers thought SF was trash.
Posts: 2711 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I didn't wash out my conditioner once. I forgot I hadn't done it for half the day too, and kept on touching my hair and wondering why the heck it was so greasy.
I've pulled all nighters (reading fiction as opposed to studying), missed my stop on buses, and nodded absently to my kids when they asked me if they could paint the pumpkins now.
Posts: 438 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Last year during ISTEP (standardized test that only sophomores take) they had the bells shut off so not to interupt the sophomores, I was at lunch reading and didn't notice my whole table get up and go to 4th period, so I was there about another 20 minutes. I don't remember how I explained it to my english teacher, but she was pretty gullible so probably not too hard. Now all of my friends at lunch should be punished.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I too read while driving. In a very odd way, it IMPROVES my driving over long distances; I have a tendency to be hypnotized by boring stretches of road but absolutely energized by words.
Of course, this is probably small comfort to the people in the other lane. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I read notices my kids bring home from school and other such things while stopped at stoplights, but actually READING WHILE DRIVING? Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Okay, but then what? The book is propped on the steering wheel, but how do you focus on the letters and keep track of the road?
I'm an avid reader... I know how it is when I read.. everything else fades out. There's NO way I could focus on my book and on the road. Perhaps it is a flaw of my eyes.
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I have burned and overcooked food on several occasions because of reading. Or I try to walk and read at the same time. Or, I read and eat at the same time and get FOOD on the books or I read and cook at the same time.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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When the 4th Harry Potter book came out, I waited for my brother to come back from the midnight release party from B&N. As part of my birthday present the month before, I was promised first dibs. He came home at around 1:30 am, and I started it as soon as he put it in my hot little hands.
At around 5 am, I figured I might need some sleep. After all, I needed to mow the lawn and pack up for band camp.
At about 8:30, I wake up and start in on GoF full force. It wasn't till noon when I finally started mowing the lawn. At around 2, I get back to my book. I finished at exactly 6:10 that night, with barely enough time to pack up a few things.
The story of OotP isn't quite so exciting. I kinda sorta caused distrust as far as my driving skills were concerned (I popped two tires on a narrow road's curb) and nomatter how hard I tried, I couldn't use my parent's car for the midnight release. The best I could do was tail my parents to Sam's Club where they'd take advantage of my dad's business membership to do some early morning shopping. I got the first copy at 7:00 am and happily sat in the car while the 'rents shopped for an hour. I hardly stopped for the rest of the day. I finished at 10:00 that night, having eaten once the entire day.
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I developed quite a talent for memorizing my paths to school because I had my nose in a book. I also get less klutzy when i read and walk.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I've missed my bus stop before...though that is not that huge of a deal, it can be a bit annoying
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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Could all the drive-while-reading (or is it read-while-driving?) types please reassure me that you only do this on very straight, lightly-trafficked stretches?
Y'all are giving me the collywobbles!
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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If I find a book that I really enjoy, I will not eat sleep or move until I am finished with that book. I went three days straight when I was reading Centennial. It doesn't realy count though because my mom made me a couple of sandwiches.
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Christmas 2000. My brother and sister-in-law bring their two kids from Virginia (I think) to PA to spend Christmas with my mom and me. Mom gets me Pastwatch for Christmas. I spend all day (10 hours) reading the book from cover to cover, completely oblivious to my brother and his family who I get to see maybe once a year if I'm lucky. Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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If you think reading while driving is bad, try reading while flying. A helicopter. Although to be fair, the reading material is rarely fiction. It's usually more along the lines of maps, regulations or approach charts.
Thank God for force trim.
Posts: 224 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Speaking of driving, I also have read behind the wheel when I've been into a good book. But that's not the dumbest thing I've ever done in a car.
Once when I was about 19 I got an Animaniacs activity calendar on a trip to Salt Lake. It had large mosaic color-by-numbers and connect-the-dots and all manner of other activities and games. I completed the entire calendar during the four hour trip back to St George, and I was the only one in the car.
19-year-olds can be a little brain damaged sometimes.
Posts: 127 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I started reading War and Peace during finals one quarter when I had one day with no exam. I so should have been studying for electrical engineering finals I had to take over the next few days, but instead I read for 24 hours in a single sitting and finished it. (I did skip a few of the battle scenes.) Wow that makes you feel so weird to do that. Don't remember how I did on finals that time but I guess I passed. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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To read in the car (not that I recommend any of this. I shudder to think that I actually did this) you do this. You prop the book up on the steering wheel so that your head is pointed straight ahead and the only movement necessary to view the road is the that of your eyes. This should be done on only relatively straight roads without lights (highways are usually the best.) As you drive, your peripheral vision notes the painted markers in the road, to make sure that you are pretty much in the lane you are supposed to be (and if they have those things- what are they called?- on the right side of the road that cause your tires to vibrate if you veer too much the right, that helps.) Your top left cornor of your peripheral vision will also pickup anything ahead. Then you just read a line or two, look up, read a line or two, look up...If you note a car coming or a particularly curvy piece of road, then stop reading until you are in a good place to continue.
Again, I don't recommend this at all (though I used to do it alot). Books on tape are really best if you must listen to something interesting (me) while driving. But even then, if you're tired, they can start to make you drowsy.
Driving is really too dangerous to put less than your full attention on.
But the power of stories is undeniable.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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Crap. Have you people never heard of books on tape? Though I admit to being a snob about abridged versions. I bought the new David Sedaris book on tape (read by the author, natch) while I was in Tennesse.
I may never get to finish it, because I rarely drive withouut the kids in the car and I'm fairly certain I don't want to explain somethings to the boys right now. Plus, some of the essays are depressing, despite being funny.
I've done the stayed-up-too-late-felt-ill-missed-apointments thing. Recently, I have broken down and bought some of the early Anita Blake, Vampire hunter novels, because my library system doesn't keep pulp fic around that long. Still haven't gotten to the ones everybody says are full of kinky sex. So far, they're mostly fun, if somewhat bloody, and she tends to re-use the same exact descriptive phrases over and over. That pisses me off, because if I was her editor, I'd make her fix it. But I guess stories about tough-as-nails gumshoe vampire killers don't exactly have to be tight.
So, the dumb thing those books have caused me to do is to actually spend money to get more of them.
The Harry Potter books have caused me to openly ridicule otherwise nice people who think HP is a Satanic Plot.
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Heh, I'll give ya some free advice - all of the Anita Blake books and the Merry Gentry series end up as not-so-soft core porn. The early ones, not quite as bad - the second half of the Anita Blake and all of the Merry Gentry are just bad in that respect.
On the semi-bright side, Blake's success have inspired a number of magical-spooky authors in the same genre - Jim Butcher and Tanya Huff are two I can think of at the moment.
-Trevor
Edit: I should point out I stopped reading the Blake series three-quarters through and gave up entirely on Merry Gentry after one book because if I really wanted soft-core porn, I do have a dvd player.
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Cool. I've been rereading those books. I think she puts opium between the words or something because I get SO SUCKED IN... I have two or three of them, but the library takes forever to get the earlier ones on ill so I might buy them from half.com. Now I am reading Kiss of Shadows... I get so distracted by books and music I forget I have to eat.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Hmmm. There was this one author whose books were so good I checked his website, and then I started posting regularly and then I started actually meeting other people who posted there and then I fell in love with one of them and now I’m going to marry him.
But on reflection, that really isn’t a dumb thing at all. Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I don't think loss of sleep over reading a book is dumb. It better not be. I've done it so many times that I've lost count. In fact, at the risk of invoking Britney Spears, I did it again last night. This time the culprit was Songmaster. I had enough restraint not to read it all in one night. (It took three nights, actually.) Of course, I was sobbing like crazy at the end.
As for those who read and drive at the same time, there are chapter breaks for a reason. Stay safe.
Posts: 822 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:In a very odd way, it IMPROVES my driving over long distances; I have a tendency to be hypnotized by boring stretches of road but absolutely energized by words.
Ditto Tom on this. Well, I don't READ while I'm driving, but I do listen to stuff... if the car I'm in doesn't have a tape player, I'll use headphones and my walkman... to which some folks have sometimes said, hey, you shouldn't use headphones while you're driving... but I'm using in-ear headphones at low-volume, and I can hear better than someone in another car blaring music or holding a heated conversation...
With audiobooks, I don't think I've ever missed an exit or anything... but I've had friends tell me that they'll drive around a little bit longer, or sit in their car at the end of their commute for a little bit, in order to hear what happens next... Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I'm exactly the same, Plaid. I've worn headphones quite a few times when I was driving a UHaul truck or something.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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Heh - when I moved here a few weeks ago I drove a U-haul that had only a radio and no tape deck. There are a few stretches on my drive that don't get any radio stations, and to avoid having to drive in utter silence, I had my laptop on next to me, playing iTunes. I got some weird looks, but totally enjoyed myself. I've been known in the past to put off leaving on a road trip until I'm done making a mixed tape to listen to. I think it may be bordering on the compulsive.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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