Reading at the store.

For most of my career, I've had a general policy of not reading at the store. Oh, I'll pick up an occasional comic and skim it while I'm standing there, but flat out concentrated reading, not so much.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

1.) I don't like being interrupted while I'm reading.

2.) It doesn't look professional.

I haven't been a dick about this with my employees. I've told them it's O.K. to read, but ONLY if they immediately lay the book down when someone walks in the door. There have been other stores I've wandered into where the clerks acted like they didn't care if I was there. Bad message.

But things have gotten slower, and I've found myself a little too often doing nothing at all.

So, I decided with snow on the ground and plunging temperatures and it being Tuesday in November and all, I'd let myself read.

The mistake I made was -- I was reading Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, the second book in the Hunger Game series.

If you haven't heard of this series -- you will. Let me be the first to tell you about it. I think it's going to be the next big thing -- the next Twilight, if you will. The next Harry Potter. Maybe not as big, but it's getting there.

And I was hooked. The second book is even better than the first.

Customers were walking in, just as Katniss was ready to take someone down, defy President Snow, save the helpless. Great stuff.

I'm a little annoyed by the romance motif -- she loves Gale, no she loves Peeta, no she loves Gale, no she loves Peeta -- but then she takes out a bad guy and all is forgiven.

So, I'm not sure about my experiment in reading at the store. Maybe I just need to pick less addicting books.