Thank you, thank you, for leaving burrito residue (sauce, rice, bean remnants) stuck sporadically throughout over 150 pages! While I am impressed by your dedication to both literacy and burrito consumption, I do have some questions.
Was this the same burrito, consumed over what I imagine would have been at least an hour and a half long period? If so, wow! Good for you; that is some seriously patient eating. I certainly don’t have that self-control! What I do have, however, is the knowledge that leaving a bunch of rice stuck in a book is both gross and easily avoided, and the desire to not do that. Cool, huh?
Or maybe it was the same burrito, but you are a speed reader, and you finished both burrito and book in a much shorter period. If so, again, I’m quite impressed. I can’t speed read! But, I can take the split second it takes to wipe a bunch of rice & sauce off a page. I guess we just use our speed for different purposes. Or maybe, it was several different burritos consumed in multiple sittings.
Perhaps you, like myself, found the book a bit dull and took many sessions to finally finish it. For you, the simultaneous burrito/reading experience may have heightened the pleasure of reading one of Patricia Highsmith’s less engrossing works. For me, however, your burrito consumption actually, posthumously (RIP the burrito), seriously diminished my enjoyment of reading this book and indeed, I eventually only finished it to spite you. Yes, you! Stranger with the burrito(s)!
Every time I opened this book in public I became paranoid; did the person beside me see all the weird stains and rice and think that I had done that? Did a coworker notice, and think me capable of such a culinterary crime (portmanteau of culinary/literary, perhaps a linguistic crime in itself, will maybe delete that later). That it was I, a respectful —nay, reverent—book lover who could have so desecrated a novel? There were a couple of pages that I felt so uncomfortable reading because of this fear that I had to (cringe) skim them.
So thank you, burrito lover. I have not been this uncomfortable reading in public since reading Portnoy’s Complaint on the TTC.
televanessa 