Too few books; Can you believe it?

  I'm on my way home from a quick one-day business trip. I left home yesterday with two books in my backpack. One was a marvelous fantasy novel, Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. I was probably half-way through the book and I expected to finish it while in the air between Dallas and Toronto. Therefore, I had a second book along: Baffled in Boston, a cozy mystery by Gary Provost. I figured that this would be enough to read on my two direct flights. But, a bad thing happened; my flight to Toronto was cancelled due to mechanical problems. The airline rebooked me on a later flight, but that one left Dallas 6 hours after my original flight. And so, I finished reading Bridge of Birds sitting there in the Admiral's Club at DFW, long before my plane took off for Canada. Consequently, as I'm waiting in the Admiral's Club today for my return flight, I finished reading Baffled in Boston. So there I was with a 3.5 hour flight in front of me and nothing to read.

Obviously, I needed to visit a bookstore. Unfortunately, I had already passed through customs and immigration and the bookstore was on the other side. That meant my choices were limited to the 3 dozen or so titles in the convenience store next to my departure gate. I browsed through the available titles, noting that there were several new paperback mysteries including First Family by David Baldacci, Blood Game by Iris Johansen, and even The Advocate by John Grisham. But I wasn't in the mood for any of those. There were also a significant number of historical fictions, but since these were invariably in trade paperback format, they were priced around $18 (Canadian). I finally settled on A Rogue of My Own by Johanna Lindsey—a romance novel set in the courts of Queen Victoria. I'm sure that I'll find someone at BookObsessed to take it off my hands when I've finished reading it.

So, surprise, surprise. Here I sit. I've read the first page and a half and simply set the book aside. I wasn't all that interested in it when I bought it in the first place, and I'm looking for anything to keep me entertained so I won't have to read the only book I have with me—well, at least the only book I haven't already read.

So here's a first for me—too few books!