I feel weird.

I’m at a loss. Like a part of me has gone missing.

I’m uneasy.

At loose ends.

I feel . . . lacking. Out of sorts. As though something unnatural has happened to me.

It can only mean one thing.

There’s nothing on my nightstand.

That’s right: I don’t have a book on the go at the moment.

Hard to believe, I know, but your L.A. Mood graphic-novel correspondent isn’t reading anything right now.

Talk about unnatural!

I don’t know if I’m the only person who feels this way, but my usual state of being is that I have my nose stuck in at least one book.

Sometimes more than one.

But at this moment, I’m between books. I finished a bunch of graphic novels at the end of August, and I have yet to decide what’s next on my reading journey.

This doesn’t happen often. I typically have a long mental list of the titles I want to tackle.

But for whatever reason or non-reason, I haven’t been able to settle on my next reading choice.

Why does this make me feel leery?

I guess it’s because having a book beside my bed is the natural state of things for me, whether it’s a graphic novel or a non-fiction title or something else.

Not to be all psychoanalytical about it, but reading has been a constant in my life since my parents read to me as a little kid at bedtime.

Out of all the generous things they did and do for me, this has had the most powerful impact on the person I am today. They gave me the gift of literacy.

Every night, there would be a book like Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman or a Dr. Suess title or a volume from Richard Scarry.

If I was cranky and they wanted to get me to take an afternoon nap, my parents would offer me a “read rest,” which meant I would work my way through a pile of books until I dropped off, thus forever connecting two of life’s most awesome things – reading and sleeping – in my mind.

These gave way to more mature books as I aged, and it wasn’t long before I was reading on my own. Comics like Fat Albert, Star Wars, and Captain America came first, followed by the Merlin trilogy from Mary Stewart and the pulpy Morgaine books by C.J. Cherryh.

Naturally, English was my favourite class in high school and I picked up an undergrad and grad degrees in the same topic prior to heading to Ryerson for my journalism education.

I don’t want to overstate it, but reading has been a thread running throughout my life.

And of course I married an avid reader who burns through a different urban fantasy every couple days. When we finished our basement in Poplar Hill, she and I agreed there had to be room for lots of bookshelves – finally, a library of our own.

I agree with the columnist who once wrote that some books aren’t just books for me, they are events in my life. Turning points.

Marvel comics fascinated me with their wordplay. Where else was I going to see terms like “mutant,” “stasis,” “uncanny” and “eldritch”?

Although he was a fiction writer, Charles Bukowski has influenced my journalism writing deeply. And when I stumbled across James Stockdale’s A Vietnam Experience in the D.B. Weldon Library at Western University, I began my lifelong quest to be a Stoic.

The problem, come to think of it, may be that there are too many books I want to read right now.

So I feel kinda paralyzed. Ever felt that way?

I had a friend in grad school who had a solution.

He told me once that he wanted to be a university professor so badly because he figured it was the only job where he could get paid to read for a living.

If you have any suggestions for what I should read next, I’m all ears.

Oh, and what book do you have on the go right now? I’d love to hear all about it in the comment section below!

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.