Three big books borrowed, and their due dates are daunting.

I made the mistake of picking up three big books at the library yesterday. I'm not a fast reader and I don't have lots of time for reading anyway. Waiting for me on the request shelf were Richard Price's "Lush Life" (464 pages), Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (352 pages), and "Great Short Works of Dostoevsky" (768 pages). There's no way I will read all of those pages in three weeks.

I did open Dostoevsky randomly to somewhere in the middle of "Notes from Underground" while on my break last night and found myself deeply enthralled with the narrator's cutting speech to a woman named Lisa. Instead of going back to the beginning, I just kept reading from that random spot. Maybe it wasn't Dostoevsky's intention, but I am now reading "Notes from Underground" as part mystery. Who is this Lisa? What is it she does that he's lecturing her so harshly about? How did he meet her? What's his fixation with her? It's likely that I'll be staying up late tonight to finish it, and then starting it again from page one and reading it to where I randomly began before. Like Dostoevsky as directed by Tarantino, it'll all come together in time.

But enough about books. I'm home with the kids today and it's time to build a pillow fort. It's time because they say it is. Sounds good to me.