Take a page out of my book...

Earlier today, in celebration of my 25 birthday I was engaging in a favorite past time: reading in a cafe before noon. Now don't get me wrong, I like reading in cafes after noon as well but there's something about the early to mid-morning hours that are sort of magical to me. My favorite time of the day is probably between 9am and 11am. Between these hours the day is still so full of promise, brimming with undiscovered potential and not yet dog-eared by the realization that each new day is often very much the same as the day before. (The worst time of day for me is the hours between 3pm and 5pm. I find that these hours are often the drudge hours; the stretched-to-thin pockets of time that serve as the no-mans land hinge of time, swinging between my promising morning and my anticipated evening.)

So there I was: hearty book in hand, coveted table by the window claimed and ready for some serious recreational page thumbing. Right now I'm reading a book by a Canadian author named Robertson Davies. He passed away a few years ago and wrote most of his major books in the 60's and 70's. He's quite an interesting guy: a one time actor at the Old Vic in England, a University Professor, a playwright and a well traveled novelist. He also has a great photo of himself on the back of the book which embodies the romanticism of what I would imagine a deceased, educated, jack-of-all-trades, absent minded professor/literate novelist to look like (that or an intellectual Santa Clause).

Also, his books also have some great titles: Fifth Business, The Manticore, and A Mixture of Frailties to name a few. I'm currently reading What's Bred in the Bone the middle novel of a trilogy which I purchased at a used book store. I bought all three books bound in a single volume so the final page count at the end of the third book is quite high clocking in at 1136 pages, making the entirety of the book cumbersome to tote around but also impressive to view.

I was about five pages into my special birthday read when something strange happened. My book rebelled against me. I'll explain. There I was, thoroughly enjoying page 566, when all of a sudden I was brusquely catapulted to page 599. Thirty-three pages had somehow been skipped entirely! My first instinct was panic. I scoured the thick volume back to front thinking that maybe these pages had simply been misplaced or perhaps, in a moment of uncharacteristic discontentment, had not enjoyed their chronology and decided to relocate to what they thought a more interesting section of the novel. Sadly, this was not the case. The pages had simply not been included.

To add insult to injury the last bit of type of pg 566 was a hyphenated punch to the gut: "He never married; no ne-". To confuse matters further before I realized the omission I spent a good 48 seconds trying to make sense out of the continuing text from page 599 which read "uniting powder with lilac oil to make a splendid ultramarine." I almost went on reading, thinking that perhaps "neuniting" was just a word not in my personal lexicon, until I noticed the disjointed page numbers.

So now I'm left with a birthday conundrum. Do I try and find another copy of this semi-obscure book? And then even if I find a copy do I purchase it just to read 33 pages or do I try and read it in whatever establishment happens to have it on hand? Also, in the meantime will my fidelity to this book remain unwavering or will I slowly lose interest and find solace in the pages of a fun, flirty, literary fling? As I lay sleeping peacefully last night, a confident young man of 24, who could have guessed that the advent of my 25th year would be fraught with such a challenge? Is this what life is going to be like from here on out? Curse you pages 567-598!