At work, I take breaks.  When I go on said breaks, I take a book with me.  I need something stimulating to do out there.  Staring at trees may be stimulating for some, but it’s just not cutting it for me.

To get downstairs, I have to ride the elevator.  In the elevator, I have noticed something interesting about people.

I’m in the elevator or waiting for it to go down or up, holding my book and people are always like, “That’s a big book” or “I really need to read more” and I’m all like, excuse me?  At first I thought they were just trying to make an effort to know me, because I am new at the company, but I have realized that they feel intimidated by the book.  As if, me having a book  makes them less intellectual because they don’t have one.

I think this is extremely weird.  People shouldn’t be intimidated by other people reading.

The level of intimidation seems proportional to the thickness of the book.  When I was reading Coraline (about 100 pages), most of the questions I got were, “Good book?”  Now that I am reading a book that is over 1,000 pages, I get comments and questions such as, “I could never read a book that thick!” “I used to read” (I don’t even know what this comment means.  Did this person forget how? Not to mention, I don’t care) “Wow, you must love books!”  Apparently, the length of the books I read are a reflection on how much I love to read.  I guess when I read shorter books I don’t love books as much.  If I walked around reading the Bible, which is like a million pages long, people would assume I must love to read more than breathing.  And they would also assume that I love Jesus.  And morals and things like that.  Maybe I will start carrying around the Bible to throw people off…Hmmm….