Do judge this book by its cover. (Image via St. Martin's Press)
I have a hard time turning the page on things.
The hardest for me is ephemera, various types of which I collect religiously — beefcake photography and clippings, advertising, Madonna magazines and ... books.
I'm a writer, and most of my career has involved some form of publishing, first book publishing (I worked for a rare female literary agent, who was equal parts bohemian and John Bircher; and for St. Martin's Press as an editorial assistant), then news (Reuters, ever so briefly), then porn (when the owner of Mavety Media scoffed at my suggestion he digitize his millions of slides because men would never adapt to jerking off at a computer), then teen entertainment (I founded a pinup mag), then blogging. Through it all, I've published and self-published my own books, too.
In spite of that, I have found less and less time to read over the years, have perhaps even developed — against my will — an aversion to reading anything too long, like a kid seeing a fascinating-looking YouTube video then clicking away upon realizing the length is 8 minutes-plus. In the past few years, I've read scandalously few books, even though I've tried. Does leaving them, half-read, displayed prominently on the little table by my bed count as reading them?
I tried Andrew Sean Greer's orgiastically praised Less, but wanted more.
