Non-Fiction Please!

Reclining in a warm tub full of bubbles, fluffy fat snowflakes drifting lazily outside the windows, I am reading an Earl Emerson novel and sipping coffee. As always when in the midst of a good book I start thinking of people who I could pass it on to.

My husband definitely is not on that list. He doesn’t read fiction.

Steve is incapable of opening a fiction book at the beginning and reading it to its completion. Or any book for that matter. Unless it’s a kids picture book. His normal stockpile of reading material includes four pound technical books, non-fiction of any kind, magazines, manuals and picture books.

An aspect of Steve’s Asperger Syndrome is mild dyslexia. He has to work very hard to put together complete sentences on a full page of text. When he was working on his master’s degree he probably spent three to four times the normal study time to complete his lessons. Pictures help him decipher print. Hence the multitude of magazines and kids picture books that are mixed in with his books.

Steve loved to read books to our kids when they were young. Since I can read upside down as easily as right side up, I could see he wasn’t always ‘reading’ what the author had written. The kids couldn’t read, and didn’t seem to care if a favorite book was read differently. Perhaps they appreciated a fresh version. The goofier the book, the more Steve reread it.

Steve also has trouble focusing on just one book. He will simultaneously ‘read’ a half dozen books along with many different magazines. Plus he has the TV going in the background. It’s enough to drive me out of the room.

A trip home from the library for Steve will usually include twenty some books at once. All non-fiction. All the same subject. (Which is typically whatever he might have been wondering about at work that day.) I’ve seen as many as fifty some books stacked up next to his recliner at one time. He is in book heaven around here. There’s our local library, plus the libraries in neighboring towns. There is a library at work, and even libraries in the neighboring county. He hits them all. Add to that all the books he gets from used bookstores and online…

Well, you get the picture.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?” I ask.

He looks confused. “A bit much of what?" he replies. My husband always seems to like answering a question with a question.

He looks even more confused when I laugh.