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I’m almost 2/3 of the way through Abigail Adams and very much looking forward to the book club discussion later this month. It’s a fascinating book – easy to read, I’m learning a lot and it’s making me think about a whole host of issues. Despite all that, I’ve been getting twitchy and I finally figured out why.

I’m fiction hungry.

It happens sometimes when I read a longer nonfiction work, but usually I have to be kind of bored and I am definitely not bored with Abigail Adams, so I’ve been telling myself to buck up and get a grip. And I do, for an hour of listening or so, but then part of my brain start thinking about several yummy sounding novels I have in my stash and Laurie posting a list of the 10 best books she read in 2010 doesn’t help at all. Several of this list are now on my hard drive – yes, I know I’m on a book diet, but the library doesn’t count, does it?

So. The fantasizing about this novel and that one has been increasing and I was starting to think that I’d completely lost my ability to read something edifying, but then I remembered being captivated by The Wave, so that clearly wasn’t it. And late last night it came to me.

Much of my life is nonfiction. MyRACentral is nonfiction, The Book is nonfiction and my blog is definitely not fictional – sure, it’s a place where things are much looser and I get to think and meander and sure, some of the events I write about our ludicrous in the extreme, but I don’t make this stuff up. And that’s it. Balance.

I read novels to nourish a different place in my head and without it, I feel a little lopsided. It doesn’t matter how fascinating a pile of nonfiction tomes is piled on my metaphorical night table, a novel will usually appear more tantalizing to me. Because for most of my day, that part of my brain doesn’t get fed and it gets hungry. Actually hungry, starving even. Describing the dance of titles traipsing through my head while I’m trying to focus on Abigail as “fantasizing” was the only way I could think of it. It was like being really, really hungry, not having eaten very much of anything for days and imagining dish after succulent dish floating through your head, the aroma wafting by your nostrils and… Okay, there was almost drooling.

Is there a book version of drooling?

So I’m going to take a break of a break from Abigail and dive into a novel. Most likely this one. I’d planned to pick one from Laurie’s list, but that one has been on heavy rotation in my fantasies, so that’s where I’m going to go. Bookclub might be a bit delayed.