A non-reading reader

I don't get a lot of books in the mail during my online trading. That's fine with me. In fact I kind of discourage people from sending me books.

That's because I never read them. I want to read them. But I don't.

There are several really good books sitting on my bookshelf right now that I want to read. They've been sitting there for one, two, three, five years. Waiting.

This would be surprising to anyone who knew me 30 years ago. I read books and magazines just about every day. I couldn't get enough. Book-reading was one of the top five things that I did. I could get through an entire book in one or two days.

Now it takes me two years to get through a book. No joke. Two years.

This is the product of a busy life plus three blogs. I know nobody wants to read this, but I am looking forward to wrapping up the two set blogs I'm running, just so I will have more time to read books.

I've become a "non-reading reader." During the first 25 years of my life, "reading" meant opening a book, it meant turning pages. If you weren't doing that, you weren't reading.

But I still do read. A lot. I read all the blogs and read online in general. I "read" Twitter, if that can be considered reading. And I read at work. Reading is my job. I read and edit stories, read the wire, read online stories. It's all I do there is read.

That could be another reason why I don't open a book. I'm worn out on reading.

Jim from the blog cards as I see them sent me a book by Tommy Lasorda, called "My Way". We Dodger fans know good "Lasorda propoganda" -- as gcrl called it -- when we see it, so I was happy to get this. However, even though Jim said it's a quick read, who knows when I'll get to it. There are already so many other books waiting to be read.

I also received a few cards with the book.

Four very welcome Dodgers from 2017 Finest. Although this isn't the greatest Finest design, I still love the brand and will continue to say that if Topps wanted to create excitement around its flagship brand, then it would make Finest flagship as a 700-card set instead of whatever total Finest is now.

(This will automatically elicit horrified comments from those who don't want flagship to look anything like Finest).

(This will also cause some people to sniff about how unrealistic and impractical my suggestion is).

(I don't care what anybody else thinks, I think it would be cool).

Jim also sent a needed 1975 Topps buyback card for my quest. This is the 190th card accumulated. I hope to go over 200 as soon as I have cash after the holiday rush.

Most of my "book reading" comes when I am on vacation or if I'm sitting in a waiting room. That's about all I can fit. (I also don't watch TV, except for baseball, so it's not TV that's taking up all my time).

The 1971 Topps blog will wrap up in a couple of months. The 1985 Topps blog will finish at some point in 2018.

After that, I expect to be a voracious book-reader once again.

I have a lot of catching up to do.