Avoiding Life

Somebody wrote that abandoning a book is tantamount to heresy. I am among those who share this belief, and last weekend I dared to go even further: What if abandoning a book is not tantamount to heresy but not finishing it in one sitting is?

Last weekend I decided to reward myself, a reward that involved spending all of my waking hours with my nose in a book. It was like returning to those blissful days of childhood, when I never stopped reading--not even for food or sleep--until I reached the final page; when nothing really mattered beyond the pages of cherished books. While before I read just for the sheer pleasure of it, now it has become a means of avoiding life itself.  How true these words of W. Somerset Maugham are:

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge for almost all the miseries of life.”