...I'm reading.
It feels like a guilty pleasure, akin to the feeling of indulging in that last piece of chocolate you so cleverly hid from your husband and son or like buying that new pair of shoes that is most definitely not in this month’s budget and then passing them off as “those old things…” when asked about their sudden appearance in the closet. Guilty because picking up that book indicates that there is a price to pay; an intrinsic responsibility that will not be completed; a child that will be trusted to play on his own in the backyard for an hour; a dinner that will consist of only macaroni and cheese; a day without laundry; a night without sleep. Or better yet, two weeks of wild abandon.
In two weeks, I completed 12 books. TWELVE!!!
It started out as an innocent visit to the library, in search of picture books to capture the attention and ignite the imagination of my three year old. Thoughtlessly, I let my eyes stray to the adult fiction stacks, longing for a book that wasn’t splashed with colorful images of dinosaurs and rhyming text. I knew what I wanted. And I knew where to find it. With my three-year old in tow, I located exactly what I was craving and inconspicuously tucked it into our library bag.
When we got home, I curled up in my overstuffed red chair with my library book, giddy at the thought of rebellion.
What the book lacked in moral value, it made up for in hysterical laughter (the gravy ladle, nail gun incident was unforgettably funny!) and I rediscovered my happy place in the world of madcap bounty hunters and big Jersey hair; pineapple upside-down cake and crazy sexual tension; the humorous and sexy world of Stephanie Plum.
I started reading the Stephanie Plum books about ten years ago. I was so enthralled with the series that I read it over and over and over again. They were my legal stimulant throughout college, my greatest form of stress relief. In a fever, I began collecting the books so that they’d be at my beckoning call day and night; and then, in ten minutes of self-righteousness just before Brock was born, I got rid of them. It was two weeks ago that I decided my ten minutes of self-righteousness had been ten minutes of stupidity and I started reading the series over again.
Janet Evanovich authors these morally bankrupt and insanely funny Stephanie Plum adventures. They’re the sort of books I’d recommend and NOT recommend to my friends. The writing is stellar. The humor is intoxicating. The sex is kind of exciting. The language consists of a lot of four-letter words. So, take this recommendation or don’t take it. As for me, I’ll probably have to repurchase the series, much to the chagrin of my husband, and devote many more hours in self-indulgent irresponsibility to the pursuit of reading.
