Is there anything better than a great book?

Over the weekend, I started a new book, Gone Girl.  I've been hearing about it for a few weeks, but when my mom recommended it, meaning that the proverbial "everyone and their mother" was reading it, I figured it was time. 

I'm only a few chapters in, but it is so good.  I just finished Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck (in audiobook form, which I highly recommend: listening to her read her own work makes it that much more entertaining).  There's a spot-on essay in it about the rapture of reading a wonderful book.  Is there anything better than being in the middle of a good story?  It's such a tension though, because when I'm reading a truly excellent book, all I want to do is find out what happens . . . but I dread it being over, because then it will be over, and I'll never be able to feel that way about the book again.

As a child, I was an obsessive reader.  (Case in point: I used to make my brother play Library.  There was a card catalog involved.  It still exists at my parents' house.  I was obviously a very hip kid.)  The upshot of being an obsessive reader as a kid is that your world could come to a grinding halt while you finished your book, with minimal fallout.  Red Rover could proceed in your absence.  But as an adult, this is a serious problem: it's not funny when you miss your train stop because you're laughing too hard at Bossypants.  And it's not exactly socially acceptable to shirk your work because you're finishing The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. 

The real kicker: when you're this obsessed, you don't even care.  You're just enraptured.

PS: I keep track of interesting book suggestions on Pinterest, which you can check out here; and a fascinating site dedicated to the subway reading habits of New York City (via Sho & Tell).

(Images by Garance Dore; via Habitually Chic/photo credit unknown; and Bernhard Wolf, via Note to Self.)