...And They All Lived Happily Ever After...

Yesterday during our car trip, I finished the book I was reading. I needed another, but I was in a dark and bad place mood wise today. I don’t like shopping for a book when I’m feeling dark and lonely.

I walked into Barnes and Nobles, going to their sale section. I don’t like buying hardback, they take up too much space, but if I’m going to do it, I only do it on sale. I don’t reread books. I read them once and they’re done. Nothing on those shelves looked good.

I walked to the new release paperbacks. Nothing. I mill around the store, shelves overflowing with books, and nothing, I wanted nothing.

Now I’m frustrated. Sometimes, if I am in the right mood, I can hover my hand over the books, just ¼ inch from the bind, and I can tell what book I should read. And I am never disappointed. But the mood must be right.

I know, it is odd to think that is how to pick a book, but I liken it to the night my husband and I went to the crap tables. He walked away, I had my chips in my hand. I had never played and to this day could not tell you the rules or even what the table looked like...as in the set up. The young man explained the game to me and I nodded and then for the next two hours, I just played. I would run my hand over the board, chips in hand, and I would just know where to place them… I knew, I could ‘feel’ like in the pit of my stomach, an energy change, I knew how the dice would roll… and I was never wrong. I raked it in that night.

I’ve never played again and I don’t intend to. I feel certain I could not duplicate that scenario. There was just something odd in the air that night and I just knew what was going to happen before it did. Plus, now that I’ve written about it, for sure I am jinxed.

But this is the feeling I can get with books when I am in a mood of great clarity. I can run my hand near the books and know what to read. But today, today was not one of those days.

So I walked up and down the fiction aisle, arms crossed in front of me, silently cursing as I needed an escape that only a book could provide, today of all days, and yet nothing was jumping out at me. Past the romance books, I’ve never read one of those, but today didn’t seem like the day to start. Past Pat Conroy, one of my fave’s, but I knew I was in no mood for him. Nicholas Sparks? No. Spy genre? No. I was in no mood for LeCarre.

And then as I made it through the aisle, it jumped out at me.

Odd Thomas. I’d been waiting for it in paperback. Dean Koontz. He’s a favorite standby. I don’t have to think when I read him, he just takes me away to some weird place where bizarre things happen, and I don’t have to analyze. I just have to ‘be’. And at the end of the book, I usually get a happy ending. And that is a requirement as of late. I need a happy ending.