My name is Gerald and I'm a book addict

Here’s an AI-generated ad graphic.I think it deserves some human responses. Forget to eat.

Yes, that’s true enough. I’m most productive in the morning, but I rarely miss breakfast, starting with strong coffee. Working through lunch is a real risk. But forgetting to pee or stand can be downright uncomfortable. If stressed, neglecting to stand while peeing is permissible, perhaps mandatory, depending.

Love a rainy day.

When I lived Back East, I did like those chilly, rainy days with a log on the fire and perhaps a blanket around me in the easy chair. Now that I live Hollywood-adjacent, rainstorms are infrequent but tend to be of biblical proportions, followed by muck and mudslides. At the very least, I’ll be too worried about roof leaks to muster the required attention span for anything longer than a blog post.

Picture my dream home with shelves?

My Kindle can hold a thousand books. I have LPs, CDs, and DVDs in storage. I don’t know what to do with them. Practically all of those discs have scratches, so they’re hardly collectible or salable. I could try donating to a school, but then their question would be, “What are these?” I could try finding a library, but then Siri would ask, “What’s a library?”

Book better than the movie?

Almost always, yes. But in the case of just about all of the screen renderings of John le Carré’s novels (The Night Manager, the most recent) - very nearly as good as. Bestselling novelist James Patterson admitted in his Masterclass that only two of his mysteries have been made into movies, and for one of those, the producer kept only the title. I can remember at least one other time they used just the title: The Joy of Sex was a movie inspired by a derivative how-to book, its title borrowed from The Joy of Cooking.

Dream of book worlds.

As for me, not so much. I’m chilled when a fictional book world seems truer than my reality, when a story makes me pay attention to what I may have been missing all around me. But I will say that fantasy reality seems to be particularly effective at helping tweens escape into safe, alternate worlds where they can learn to contend with monsters and demons that stand in for the genuinely fearsome bullies in their daily lives.

No chance of recovery?

Oh, I don’t know. When your friend publishes a book you fear may be better than any of yours, you may stop reading and start to write.

Or, drink enough, you’ll pass out and at least get some rest.

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