Jenna once gave me the idea of buying books from Borders and then returning them within 31 days after having read them.

The problems with that practice in my life are not ethical; they are practical:

1) I read in two- to three-months fury spurts, just like how I knit, except the reading trend is unrelated to avoiding other things in my life. Said fury spurts cannot be fabricated or induced, they just happen. I forget this, however, with great frequency, and buy fury spurts' worth of books sometimes without a fury spurt in sight.

2) I fold corners. If you know, you know.

3) Sometimes, at the end of a fury spurt, I get really ambitious and starting picking at the piles of New Yorkers all over my apartment. New Yorkers SUCK YOU IN and do not let you go until you are 13 pages into the article about the concrete industry in New York City and want to die and never read again. Behold: the end of the fury spurt.

4) Sometimes, to stave off the end of the fury spurt, I will try to "take a break," from such heavy heavy reading by listening to podcasts while commuting. Also sometimes, this happens because I can't always keep my eyes open on the bus, particularly when el Jeffo is on the bus and I need to pretend to not be there, or when it is very early in the morning AKA before 10 AM. This, ultimately, takes me away from the habit of the fury spurt and behold again: its end.

5) I am constantly overwhelmed by the volume of books in my apartment that I have not read or not finished. Sometimes this is so overwhelming that I stop reading.

Anyway, I bought Adverbs with the intention of running through it and returning it, but then I folded corners, slowed to a crawl, and realized a month had passed. That said, it was a good read: a little gimmicky but very earnest, if that is at all possible.

In case it wasn't abundantly clear: I should not write book reviews.