Reading within the lines

I wish I had read more in days gone by. Now I have a lot to read and nowhere near the time to do it. This is considering that I watch hardly any television anymore. TV entertainment quickly becomes the same old stuff; so too do movies I've found.
But it's finally struck me that with reading, you control the medium. No channel surfing, trying to discover something by chance. No risking ten bucks on a movie; let's face it, movies really are a great unknown. You're taking a chance that it won't be worth the time much less the money. I feel similarly with movies on TV, albeit with less cost.
Books, though, you control them. Yes, they do cost something. That's where patrolling discount shops and second hand stores comes in. The costs aren't so high. The risks are lower that you get a bad book than see a bad movie. You could, of course, get a bad book. But you at least get the chance to peruse it, at least a little bit, before purchase. And you learn what authors and genres you like.
When I discovered Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes I had built in supplies of new (for me) books to grab. Even before that, if you like a genre it's easy to find good, cheap books in subject areas you like. This summer alone I read my first book on black baseball, Shades of Glory, which I picked up at a discount store for $2.99. It was a good, informative, entertaining book. Similarly I'm now in the middle of The Kid, a biography of Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, which was at the same store for the same price and has been a good read too.
You get the picture. Can you turn on your TV and be assured of finding the entertainment you want? Maybe, but not necessarily. But your book is your book, and it waits patiently while you channel surf. That's a pretty good friend in my, uh, book.