My idea of Hell is being in a waiting room with nothing to read. Recently, I went to the lab to have some blood drawn in preparation for my wellness visit in a few weeks. I had anticipated a quick in and out as I had previously always experienced. How did I forget about COVID? I quickly ran out of signs on the wall to read and suffered through a two hour wait.
My students back in my teaching days never quite believed me when I told them my mother used to tell me to "put down that book and go outside and play."
It amazes me to hear that some people only read for a while before bed -- a page or two to fall asleep. Or worse, people who consider reading doing nothing or a complete waste of time!
Not being able to read while my eye was healing was the hardest part although eventually I was able to read large print books. Now I can read easily with reading glasses although I did have to trade out my collection of readers for stronger magnification.
Don is never at a loss as to what to get me for my birthday and he is quite the bibliophile himself.
I have been reading from the Gamache detective series by Louise Penny and going back to reread some of the early ones. They take place mostly in Canada, just north of the Vermont border so the setting seems familiar. The last one I read, All the Devils are Here, takes place in Paris and there's nothing wrong with that.
My sister-in-law loaned me the book she was reading when we drove down to Florida -- Ann Patchett's The Dutch House. We both enjoyed it.
Although I have ventured to the local library a few times, mostly I have been rereading from my own bookshelf:
Marilynne Robinson -- Gilead
Joan Anderson -- An Unfinished Marriage
Ann Beattie -- A Wonderful Stroke of Luck (meh)
Peter Heller -- Celine
Francine Prose -- Mister Monkey
I read a lot of nonfiction too, -- poetry, spirituality, and psychology.
Award for longest title on my bookshelves is Songs from a Voice: Being Recollections, Stanzas, and Observations of Abe Runyan, Song Writer and Performer by Baron Wormser. It's a novel loosely inspired by the life and times of Bob Dylan.
Comments
Summer time is when I read the most, when I get outdoors with my book and a container of water.
Hope your lab work went well.
Was not familiar with Louise Penny till I read her book with Hilary Clinton, State of Terror. Loved it. May have to check out some of her other books.
I have read all of Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache novels, and recently read the book she coauthored with HRC. I do find it hard some days to find time to read and am guilty of reading only at bed time where I soon get too sleepy. But not always.