Eating while reading

There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read — unless it be reading while you eat.

Edith Nesbit, British writer

Just a few days ago, although I have already forgotten where I saw it, I read someone say that reading and eating don't mix. Books are precious, while food is messy. To her, don't eat and read was comparable to don't drink and drive.

E. Nesbit

Edith Nesbit, who wrote children's books under the name E. Nesbit, perhaps to hide the fact that she was a woman, obviously thought differently. To her, combining the two is the height of luxury.

If you saw the food stains on some of my books, you would know whose side I come down on.

Usually I choose older books, usually books with previous owners,  to read at mealtime. My current breakfast book is a library discard, for example. Yet I don't always follow this rule. Recently I read William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember, a clothbound novel I bought new, at my breakfast bar. I believe it somehow escaped unmarked.

Now that I am widowed and living alone, I eat most of my meals in the company of books. Relationships can sometimes get messy, and so it goes with me and my book companions. But perhaps it is this casual, relaxed relationship that can make eating while reading, or reading while eating, such a luxury.

Besides, I can read a lot of extra books this way.