I went with [Braunbeck] to [Barnes & Noble] tonight. While he eagerly ran from shelf to shelf, scouring the titles for thing he'd been dying to read, I could barely [stand] to look at the offerings on the [shelves].

I grew up in a [household] of [bibliophile]s, and when I was a [teenager], a trip to the [bookstore] was one of my favorite things. The bookstore was like a wonderful [smorgasbord] of [entertainment] and [edification], and I was always eager to save my [pocket] [money] for whatever latest [novel] I could find from my favorite [author]s.

But all that's changed. I [read] all [day] as a part of my [work]. [Endless] screens of [Web] [pages] pass through my [brain].

And lately, I've felt a little [queasy] just going near a [bookstore]. It's the kind of [queasy] you feel when, after you've eaten way too much of an [American]-[supersized] [dinner] at a [restaurant], the [waiter] wheels out a cart of [monstrous] [sweets] to try to entice you to spring for [dessert].

I have dozens of [books] at home I've been meaning to [read] for years. I can't [justify] buying Another. Single. Book.

Yet there they are, hundreds upon thousands of [books] on [programming languages] I can't comprehend, [poet]s I've never read, [classic]s I've never cracked.

And, on another level, I'm staring at the hundreds upon hundreds of books and realizing that, someday, if all goes [well] and I get a [novel] published, it will be but a slim, easily-overlooked [volume] on those [overfull] shelves.

Those rows and rows of [fresh] [reading] now look like [Mt. Everest] in a [blizzard]: [forbidding] and [impossible].

I don't [like] feeling this way. I should dislike the [sterile] [stink] of [hospital]s, or the [smoky] grubbiness of [dive bar]s ... but instead I dread the bibliocopia of [bookstore]s?

I hope this is just a [phase].

March 1, 2003 (place)