I am in the fortunate situation of having my parents’ old car on loan indefinitely.
Now it takes me less than 15 minutes to get to work, and I can easily and swiftly go to visit a friend, or in the spur of the moment I can go catch a flick in less time than it takes to recite Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”-monologue… which really only takes a minute or two, but you get my point.
This is all very nice and I wouldn’t want to do without it, now that I’ve gotten used to having it readily available. But with a car you also get some problems. And I’m not talking about gas prices or the odd trip to the shop to get something or other fixed. Nor am I talking about the difficulties in finding a place to park, which indeed is a daily challenge.
I am talking about books!
I have always been quite the bookish type, so in the past I actually quite enjoyed the two hours of commute every day to and from school, and later on the commute to and from work. This was a perfect time to read books, and plenty of them.
I would read Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card, Douglas (Noel) Adams, Dennis Jürgensen (danish author), Peter Straub etc.
But now that I have a car I don’t get to read anything anymore. This is mainly because I can’t concentrate on reading if I’m not in a bus or in a train. It is also because I am of the firm belief that if there’s a TV around, there’s probably something worth watching, which is not always the case, but I watch it anyway.
So having a car has effectively removed my reading time and replaced it with more time for watching TV.
