It’s not easy to find a book to read while eating. The book needs to be durable (to hold up to the abuses of eating; paperbacks are clearly out) and able to be read in small chunks (so that I can read it for 15 minutes while eating, then put it down until the next day).
Magazines are obviously ideal for this purpose, but I just don’t subscribe to enough magazines. (I actually used to subscribe to Sports Illustrated for a long time—despite the facts that I only care about pro football, and that I can get more than enough sports coverage on the Web for free—just so I could get a weekly magazine. By the end of each week, I’d be reduced to reading the articles on women’s college field hockey.)
When it comes to actual books, it’s hard to find stuff that fits the bill. The hardcover Dilbert books (like The Way of the Weasel I read recently) are great, and I’ve read all of them repeatedly for just that reason; but you have to wait a decent interval before you can re-read a book after reading it, and The Way of the Weasel was still within that interval. So, when I needed some verbiage to accompany my Hot Pocket, I turned to Anne’s shelves, and pulled off Paul Reiser’s Babyhood.
Stylistically, this was similar to his Couplehood, which I reviewed here some months ago, but the subject of this book is the lead-up to having a baby, and the immediate experiences after it’s popped out—and since I have no experience with that, there were none of those little “Yes! That’s it exactly!” moments that good humor ideally inspires. I can’t say that I really loved it, but it did successfully occupy my eating time, so it’s at least as good as women’s college field hockey.
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