Reading is Fun-duh-mental

I love books, but I don't enjoy reading. I love writing, but I don't enjoy reading.

Odd, huh?

I don't know what it is. I love everything about books. I love book shopping in musty old bookstores and the megastores. I love the illustrations on jackets and the pulpy hype on the back cover of a paperback. I love sitting in an overstuffed chair with a cup of cocoa or apple cider, thumbing through the pages and looking at the font used to print.

But I can't find anything to read.

Between my wife and I, we have, literally, thousands of books. We have so many that we're turning what was the master bedroom in our home into a library, complete with the overstuffed chairs and the fireplace.

The wife reads volumes every week. She reads at least one book a week for enjoyment. That's a slow week, and that's not including other books she weeds through simply for research.

But me? I love getting books, but when it comes to find something to read, I get stuck. Part of it is because I have so many books now that I can't decide what to read, and I hear of more new books almost every day. Part of it is due to the fact that, when I set a book down for the night, I like to have finished a chapter, so I tend to read books with short chapters, or I lose interest. And part of it is because I want to like genre novels--mysteries and fantasies mainly--but the hard fact is that most novels aren't good. The last good book I read was last year. Actually, it was about this time last year, now that I think about it.

I don't know. Maybe my attention span is just getting shorter. Well, I know it's getting shorter, but I'm not sure what can be done about it. When I have free time, I'd rather write than read. I'd rather post on message boards, or journal, or free-write, or study my bible (okay, maybe not that) or just about anything having to do with books than actually read one.