The Book I Love Is On That Train And Gone

It takes a worried bookworm to sing a worried song.  Except I'm not worried; I'm pissed at myself.  I took my backpack with me to Val's birthday party.  I would stay the night and venture on into Seoul the next day for a Bookleaves book group meeting.

Getting on the subway, I threw the backpack onto the shelf over me and held my purse on my lap.  I never thought of the backpack again until I was off the train, through the station and into a taxi.  Oh shit.

There wasn't much in the backpack.  I can obviously live without it:  toiletries, a shirt I've had for 7+ years, underwear that I wouldn't want to go to the hospital in, an umbrella that was starting to get a hole in it and the huge plastic glasses with candles on them that I meant for Val to wear during the festivities.

And a book.  Not just any book.  It was my hardcover copy of this book: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

O my bookworms.  I was 150 pages in and enjoying every single word.  In the darkest corner of my bibliomanic little heart, I didn't want to stop reading it long enough to go to the party, so I packed it up with my other weekend gear and promised it fondly that I'd get back to it later on in the hotel room.  Then I fell to socializing with the other partygoers and left it on the train!

I was further punished for my faulty memory by having only a 2-year-old magazine called GROOVE to read in the hotel room.  I don't know which was worse, the dull writing, the uncertain grammar or all those typos.  Nearly every hour I woke up and cursed my forgetfulness.

Since there seemed to be no bookstores in Songtan, where the party was being held, Val kindly lent me her book -- If You Really Loved Me by Ann Rule -- for the subway ride to Seoul the next day.  As soon as I could, I stormed into a Kyobo bookstore.  I didn't care.  I would re-buy the book.  Unfortunately, all they had was one copy of the large-print edition priced at approximately $35 (USD) which much more than I had paid for my lost copy.  I couldn't do it, even though being stranded at an exciting part in the narrative with no way to finish is making me crazy.

My backpack could still turn up.  The best possible scenario is that it's in the Lost and Found at the City Hall station in Seoul.  I have pretty much mentally kissed it all goodbye, but Val is determined that I shall have it back.  This kind of thing brings out the Miss Marple in her. Stay tuned.