Well read vs well fed

I was on a flight to Boston for a press check about a year ago. I'd picked up "The Audacity of Hope" in the airport bookstore and was flipping through the pages. The man sitting next to me asked me if I'd ever heard Barack Obama speak. "Only on television," I replied. The man, who was from Chicago, told me of hearing him speak in Illinois, how moving his messages of hope were. He began telling me of his own medical missionary work in Kenya, and how he'd worked in the village Senator Obama's father had come from...

Then a "People" magazine appeared inches from my face. My friend/print producer Holly said, "I'm done with this. Do you want it?"

Embarrassed, I sputtered, "No thanks, I'm good." Holly shot me a perplexed, "Whatever, hater," expression and went back to her seat.

She knew how bad I wanted to read that "People." I never did finish "The Audacity of Hope."

Here's the thing: I can't read for pleasure anymore. My 16 years of copy editing have greatly debilitated my ability to read words on paper without a critical eye for syntax, punctuation or even typesetting. I read and correct technical, corporate and public relations documents without absorbing the content. It's a skill I'm glad to have, as it pays my bills, but when I read outside work, I have a hard time getting lost in stories and letting go of the critical eye.

I spend my down time reading AP news sites and blogs. My very favorite is Gawker, which I read for the comments. I loved the "New Yorker" for years, but let my subscription lapse because the back issues were piling up, because, alas, the last thing I wanted to do after a day of editing was to read anything else.

I do read two or three books a year, usually when I'm on vacation, but for every book I finish, I start and get fed up with the writing style of two others. Last year, I bought Susan Estrich's "Soulless," a sendup of Ann Coulter's "Godless." After about three chapters of dummy subjects, misplaced modifiers and redundancies, I was left wondering if the publishing house couldn't afford a copy editor or if Ms. Estrich was too consumed with hubris to allow her work to be edited, a la dear Dominic Dunne in "Vanity Fair." Though I did really enjoy reading Jon Stewart's "America," as it was funny and divided into easy-to-digest segments for short-attention-span readers like me, I couldn't help noticing that the typesetter hadn't corrected the quote marks and apostrophes that turn into inch- and foot-marks when type is transferred from Word to InDesign.

Back in August, my buddy Thad, a very talented designer/illustrator/photographer, gave me a book to read. He'd picked it up in Eckerd because the cover caught his eye. He raved on and on about it and said he'd read half the book before noticing the "Age 10 and up" on the cover. I let it sit on my desk for a couple of weeks before I brought it home. I had no interest in reading a kid book, but I do make an effort to at least start the books my friends give me, then give them back pretending I'd read them.

Several weeks later, on a boring Sunday afternoon, I decided to give the book a quick glance so I could give it back to Thad. I read it cover-to-cover in just over four hours. Cried out loud in gulps because it touched my stony little heart. Immediately wrote the author a fan letter. Sent copies to my mother and sister.

Since then, I started a couple of grownup books and got bored with them. I'm starting to get bored with myself here and want to go read Gawker. Anyway, read "Hurt Go Happy" and let me know how much you loved it.