September 25th, 2006, 5:50 am

The ironies of reading

Plus a special analysis of Grey’s Anatomy, Season Three, Episode One (scroll)

The possibilities seem endless: long, romantic train rides, with nothing to do but read, read, read. Surely back in my working days, I dreamt of such luxury.

A character in an infamous Twilight Zone episode had the same dream. He’d push up his glasses as he walked about his life as a banker, trying to read in the snatches of time between trains, customers and nagging wife. Catastrophe strikes, and he finds himself the only man on the planet. Gleeful, giddy, he gathers books he’d like to read into enormous piles around him. He settles himself down, opens up the first book, and looks down - only to smash his thick glasses on the ground!

“It’s not fair!” he screams to the sky, as the camera pans up and out … in the Twilight Zone.

So too feel I - with all the time in the world - and only crappy rail station books to choose from!

Travelers beware - this fate awaits you too! You’ll read a delightful review on Salon.com - think to yourself; ah, I’d like to read this book. But alas, with no mailing address, you cannot order it!

English language books are hard to find, even in huge places like Berlin’s Dussman bookstore. Most selections are limited to crappy best sellers; Dan Brown, Danielle Steele, and more murder thriller sexy crime mystery romances than you’d care to look at, all with shiny knives or gruesome embossed drops of blood on the covers. Even worse are well-meaning stores that stock mostly travel-related memoirs - as if you, on your voyage - want nothing more than escapism and reading about someone else’s trip!

I’ve gotten lucky here and there. Catch 22, a classic I’d never gotten around to reading, captivated me in my hostel room in Paris. A short history of tractors in Ukranian, read in a single sitting in Dave’s apartment in Berlin, was one of the best books I’ve read in years - hilarious, with larger than life characters that move into your imagination permanently. [Seriously, you should buy it now - you need to meet Valentina.]

And Gulag, Anne Applebaum’s mesmerizing, Pulitzer-winning history of Soviet labor camps - this book haunted my journey to and from the concentration camps.

But between these few pearls are many, many swine. Parts of me wish I’d brought a vast rolling library - others wish that the Japanese would hurry up and perfect e-paper already. But mostly, I really wish I had Asimov’s entire Robot and Foundation series - ah, to be adrift on that magical sea.

Picture me, sick, with a cold, huddled on a marble floor with a numb ass, surrounded by backpacks … the camera rising and panning out, as I cry … “It’s not fair!”

Special Note to Grey’s Anatomy fans. (Caution: spoilers for Season 3, first episode.)

OK, dears … iTunes just started selling episodes of the show last Friday. I spent about 7 hours downloading various updates and the show itself with my crappy computer and a finicky wireless connection. Finally, at 3 a.m., I had the show!

I tucked my towel up into the top bunk bed, making a little tent, and curled into the bottom bunk with a package of cookies and my headphones and told the boys to leave me alone for the next 45 minutes so I could watch the show and cry. (Which of course they found impossible to do.)

And, oh, what a disappointment!

First off, the pacing of the show was way off … just like the second half of the Superbowl/bomb episode, this two-parter felt really slow in the second half. And since the season finale happened forever ago, I had a hard time remembering what had happened … did Miranda’s husband die or live? Burke was shot …. Meredith and Derek did it, Denny died … What else?

I felt that the entire “plague” plot was contrived - like they were trying way too hard to get Derek and George to have parallel realizations that they loved Meredith and Cassie, respectively. I wanted more reaction from Addison as she found Meredith’s panties - this is her husband! She thought they were working things out!

And more lame Chris O’Donnell, finishing up his guest appearance with the lame words, “If there’s a ring, my hat is in it.” Which took me a second to process, cuz I think ring, and I think, well, ring.

Doctor McDreamy’s confession of love - ok, he was adorable, and ok, I watched it twice - were just so formulaic - “You have a choice, Meredith.” OK, yes, we KNOW she has a choice - that’s obvious by the fact that there are TWO men in her life right now - I really didn’t need to see BOTH of them state that to her.

And the retarded flashbacks really sealed the deal for me - as if someone fired all the awesome writers and replaced them with the scriptwriters for Mystic River. (Which I also hated, btw.)

Even everyone’s favorites, Bailey and Cristina, didn’t get to bark out orders or be sassy or anything. George didn’t fumble.

Izzy. Ah, yes, it comes back to Izzy. She was amazingly beautiful in that pink dress, and that’s about the best I can say for her performance. I always hated the relationship with Denny - I thought that there was no way an ambitious, smart woman from a poor background would jeopardize her future by being so open with her relationship with Denny. But I grew to like him, and I was crushed when he died, of course. But you just knew … didn’t you? …. when you saw Izzy lying on the ground … that she’d be lying there the whole episode, and she’d get up and take off the dress at the end of the show. Ah, that’s a metaphor!

I’ll watch it again and again, since it’s the only thing I have to watch on my computer. But I’m hoping that the rest of the season won’t be so predictable and formulaic. I want Bailey barking! Cristina sassing! Addison getting revenge! George fumbling and showing unpredictable strength! Meredith eating a sandwich!

What’d you guys think?