four hundred pages into crime and punishment in two days. it's been sitting in my library for about 4 years and it has just now felt right to read it. i remember the exact day i bought it, too. from one of those creepy booksellers at the flea market 4 summers ago on my way to lansing. he was absolutely mad. i offered him $100 dollars for the whole box (they were collector's books, but none were in great shape), all classics. i did some quick calculating and presented my offer to him, though he turned me down. i took 3 of them and told him that he of all people should know that he wasn't going to get that much money for them in a hundred years, especially judging by the character of his 'clientel'.
i guess that is beside the point. now i think that maybe i wasn't supposed to read them. i don't know why, but i'm a firm believer that certain people and things come into our lives at certain times, not fatefully, but instead to set out their hands for you to grasp if it is your position to do so at that place and time. our lives are nothing but a series of these events, thousands of hands lining a gauntlet where at any time you're free to grasp the ones you want to take with you. sometimes you're not in a position to do so, or you're concentrating on other things and fail to notice. other times you're presented with too many choices and can only make but a few, leaving the others forever in the past.
the loophole for me is books. they are frozen in time, but at any point can influence your life emmensely. not necessarily the world around you, but certainly your outlook can change in a matter of days. you can give them as gifts and alter other people. you can converse over them with people that have grasped the hands of those books, too, and it's as though you were both at the same place at the same time, even if you've never met said person beforehand. intimate relationships can be sparked.
as i've said, i have books that lay around that i never read until it's in my guts time for me to do so. you cannot force these things.