This may sound boring, but trust me, there’s a point to this:

I want to read a book, but I can’t find one to read.

I went to three bookstores yesterday evening. I went to the Barnes & Noble on 6th and 23rd. Then I went to the Strand. Then I went to the Barnes & Noble on Union Square. And I found nothing I wanted.

Replace “the Barnes & Noble on 6th and 23rd,” “the Strand,” and “the Barnes & Noble on Union Square” with a bar, a chat room and another bar, and you’ve nearly described many of my weekends in the last two and half years.

Why did I go to three different bookstores when they all have the same books? It’s because I saw the new paperback of Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography at the first Barnes & Noble, and then figured it would be half-price at the Strand. So I walked all the way to the Strand, but the Strand was out of it. So I went to the second Barnes & Noble, which was closer than the first Barnes & Noble, to buy the full-price paperback.

But after flipping through the pages of the book, I changed my mind and decided I didn’t feel like tackling it right now.

Also:

I looked at The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

I looked at The Dante Club by Michael Pearl.

I looked at The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand.

I looked at What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis.

I looked at Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I looked at books by Don DeLillo.

I looked at books by Richard Powers.

I looked at At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill, but I couldn’t get past the Irish Joycean dialect.

I looked at Atonement by Ian McEwan.

I looked at Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

I looked at A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

I looked at The Dive From Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer, but the story seemed too similar to the last book I read, Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me — an accident transforms the life of a woman in the Midwest and she goes/returns to Manhattan.

In the end, I didn’t buy a thing. Instead I went home and watched the first half of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” on DVD.

I think I want to read a book right now, but I can’t seem to commit to one. I can read New Yorker articles and the New York Times Magazine, but I can’t commit emotionally or intellectually to a whole book.

And I don’t feel like spending money right now on something that I’ll abandon halfway through.

There are libraries, of course, but then you can’t keep the book when you’re done. And library books are all hardcovers, while I prefer paperbacks.

Also, I am sensitive to font. Is anyone else sensitive to font? If I don’t like a book’s font, it’s hard for me to read it.

I am so hard to please.

Who knew I could stretch the books/boyfriends metaphor so far?

Lately, both just seem better in theory than in practice.

Today another of my old college singing groups, the Virginia Glee Club, was in New York City to perform Mozart’s Requiem with the choir from Smith College. After the concert, I got to ride the bus with the Glee Club across town from the concert venue to the reception. Being on the Glee Club bus brought back some wonderful memories, and as we began riding through the streets of midtown Manhattan, the president gave me the microphone, and I regaled the group with half-senile ramblings about my time in Club. It was a blast.

We drove through Times Square, but unfortunately I didn’t witness this.

Someone on the bus gave me a can of beer, which I didn’t get to finish because we arrived at the reception. Once there, I had an Absolut Mandarin with cranberry juice.

Despite having only a drink and a half, I was buzzed by the end of the event.

Back on Madison Avenue, I watched the Club guys chaotically pile back onto the bus. (Some things never change.) Then I left the brotherhood of Club guys behind, saying goodbye to my past for the second time in two weekends.

After that, I walked down Madison Avenue, head swimming, contemplating my own future.
—–

The most amazing thing happened to me last night.

After seeing “Phone Booth,” a friend and I went to Barracuda and had a couple of drinks.

Two hours later, we left.

And my clothes didn’t smell like smoke!

And then this morning I needed to go grocery shopping. I was about to throw on last night’s clothes, and for a split second I thought, Oh, I can’t wear that shirt. It smells like smoke. Then I remembered, No it doesn’t! My clothes don’t reek!

And they don’t.

I love the new anti-smoking law.