Small Vices

I have an addiction.

Sometimes people start in on something during hard times. Maybe it is sleeping pills, maybe it is internet chat rooms, maybe it is watching Sex in the City. For many, when things get better they lessen the dependency on the sleeping pills, chat rooms, Sex in the City (or whatever.) For others, it is simply the start of an addiction.

Last September things were really quite rough and I turned to a number of things. Sleeping pills (natural-ish ones though), Cinderalla movies, beer and a sudden trip to California where among those things I employed to get through the rough patch. Premier among the XXX, however, was a certain author. And specifically a certain author's certain series featuring a certain character. The author was Robert B. Parker. The series was the Spenser novels and the character was Spenser, a Boston Private Detective.

I burned through about twenty Spenser novels in a little more than six months. I had to employ strick constrictions or it would have been much worse. No starting a new novel on the same day you finished another one. No more than three checked out from the library at a time, at least a few days between dropping off the last batch before picking up the new bath. Must read them in order (which slows you down because you have to procure a specific one as opposed to picking up the first one you see that you haven't read). And so on.

Between moving, traveling and starting massage school, the last Spenser book I read was in May. MAY! Friends and family didn't speak to me about it, but I could tell they were somewhat relieved and believed the addiction to have passed. Sweet Pea even thought she had managed to supplant the Spenser addiction with a PG Woodhouse (Jeeves & Wooster) addiction.

Alas and alack, yesterday I snuck off with the golf cart to the Penn Valley library where I furtively signed up for a library card and requested several Spenser novels. I wasn't planning on coming home with anything (I'd seen on-line that the next one in the series wasn't available at this branch) but then a dark room in the back called out to me. Okay, it wasn't really a dark room in the back. It was a room in the back, but it was fairly bright and cheerful. And chock full of paperbacks for sale. And it just so happened that for the bargain price of 50 cents I could take home and keep forever (and ever and ever) the next book in the Spenser series. It seemed fitting that I should own at least one Spenser novel and the title of this one seemed rather apt as well. So I plunked down my 50 cents, raced home (at the max golf cart speed of 12 MPH) and have begun, "Small Vices," the next of the Spenser novels.

It is quite exciting. I'm pretty nervous though, the back of the book implies that Spenser gets shot and gets put in a coma...

Stay tuned!!