This very evening after work I was sitting in a Chapters bookstore, reading this great page-turner of a book, The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.Sipping a Starbucks coffee....... mmm.
All day long [at work] I wait for that moment when I will be able to set aside the concerns of life [work] and just sit for a few moments with my book [and not work].
In tonight's reading [do not worry, what I am about to say is not a spoiler, per se...] but one of the characters suddenly dies. IN A BOOKSTORE.
KICKS THE BUCKET [see above illustration] IN A BOOKSTORE.
The entire episode unnerved me.
I put the book down for a moment and had an unsettling thought.
Given the amount of time I spend in bookstores [and seriously, it is an inordinate amount of time... I would be embarrassed to reveal to you even an underestimated... estimate].... umm, where was I -- oh yeah -- I figure that it's quite likely that I myself will one day die in a bookstore.
Really, if The Grim Reaper is out looking for me [I'm being serious here] he could do no better than to search in a few local bookstores. By golly, there I am!
He can lean his sharpened scythe right up against my table there in the Starbucks and wait for just that right moment to hack me down.
In fact, other than sleeping, here are the FOUR PLACES I'LL MOST LIKELY BE:
1) Work.
2) Chapters Bookstore / Starbucks
3) Some burger joint Drive-Thru.
4) Here at this very desk in my apartment.... candles aglow.... listening to Alan Parsons Project on my iTunes.
Yikes!
Technically speaking, I live on the 13th floor!
[I hope The Grim Reaper does not read my blog! Unless "he" looks like THIS!]
********
3 comments:
Ah Cip, you crack me up. Do you think that if you revealed how much time you spent in bookstores any of your bookish readers would be shocked? And if you are in a bookstore when the scythe falls, what better place to be? I hope you are allowed one last sip of coffee and to finsih reading the sentence you are in the middle of before the lights dim :)
Hey... there are worse places to be when you kick the proverbial bucket. I'd just hate to got right in the middle of a novel. If you're lucky, it'll happen just when you're closing the book, stopping to think about what you just read but before the anxiety hits of what you'll read next.
Now that is a beautiful death!
C.
I agree with Stefanie. No better place to be. I heard once of a person being married in a library. That would be fun. :)
Post a Comment