But I won't read it at Starbucks

I'm glad it's summer and I'm not traveling. When I travel, I'm inevitably asked, "What are you reading?" That's a fine and reasonable query to toss at a writer. But, at the moment, and probably for the next several hundred thousand moments, I'm not sure how to answer without coming off as somewhat pretentious. I could mention the previous book I read, Clapton's Guitar, which is an interesting account of master craftsman Wayne Henderson, marred only by a bit too much bashing of the Martin Guitar factory, which happens to be about six miles from where I live and is well loved in these parts. Or I could mention the next book on my list, which will probably be Eric Luper's Jeremy Bender vs. the Cupcake Cadets, though I'm several hundred thousand moments away from starting that one. Or I could say those two little words and quickly change the subject. Two words. Moby Dick. A whale of a book. I'm enjoying it. Parts of it are amazing. The writing is wonderful. Parts are a struggle. I'll even admit that there are passages that have totally thwarted my attempts to comprehend them. But it's a book I started and never finished many decades ago, and I book I feel I should read. But it just seems so darn pretentious to toss out the title. (Though I guess it's meta-pretentious to blog about talking about reading it.) I guess it could be worse. I could be reading Infinite Jest.