I had jury duty this week.
I’m not complaining. Basically, I believe you have four duties as a citizen: vote, pay your taxes, serve jury duty, and take up arms to defend your country in time of war. Since no one is shooting at me, I’m in no position to whine about jury duty. Freedom isn’t free, people.
So, I sat around for a day and a half; I even made it into the jury box for about a minute before the attorney for the defense excused me.
But I didn’t like the book I brought. That was hard.
About four pages into the book that was supposed to keep me occupied while I waited I realized that it had a non-linear plot that wasn’t going to go anywhere and I had already figured out what the big reveal at the end was going to be.
When I got home that night and told C.J. about this he said, “I don’t know why you don’t keep a box of emergency books in your car so this won’t happen.”
Genius.
An emergency book box that you keep in the car for those moments when you have time on your hands and nothing to read.
So that’s what I’ll be making later today. I have almost 300 books in my TBR bookcase so why not move five or six of them into a little box that I can keep in the trunk with the spare tire.
You never know when you’ll get a flat. Who wants to stand on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck to come with nothing good to read.
Not me.
Not ever again!
May Contain Spoilers 
Not a bad idea. I’ve always kept an emergency book under the seat–a romance novel passed on to me by a friend, because I could read some of it and put it back under the seat for next time. Now that the kids are grown and I’m not so frequently interrupted, it makes sense to keep a few more good books in the car, and then bring them in to finish if something causes me to start one.
Really — such a good idea. I’ve never been on a jury, but I’ve been in my share of jury pools. It always was pretty interesting in Houston, just in people watching terms, but in Galveston, not so much. I’d think collections of letters or essays would be perfect. That way, if the book needed to go back in the trunk, I wouldn’t forget the plot line or characters before I picked it up again.
Think I’ll take C.J.’s advice, too!
This happened to me, and it was a long morning. Fortunately, it was in city court, and we got an hour for lunch. So I rushed home to get another book 🙂 Possibly two, now that I think about it.
This is the one good thing I’ve found about ebooks. I put the Google Book & Nook apps on my phone, and I keep a few (free) old books in each, and a couple of old favorites. It was the only thing that got me through a long anxious night at the emergency vet.
Yes. I don’t love reading on my phone but it works in a pinch so I keep a few random ebooks on there just in case!
I’ve set up a small stack. I’m working on finding a cool box for them. I’ll probably make one myself. Maybe a box shaped like a book……
I’ll do a follow up post when it’s done.
The thing was that I kept pulling books of my shelf that I wanted to read right away instead of stashing them away for an emergency.