Reading for Me

As summer vacation is beginning to wind down, I’m struggling with my sleep. Oh joy! There are a mixture of issues going on, but I’m not entirely sure how to fix any of them. I have been staying up later than normal because of the Olympic broadcasts that I love. That normally is a good recipe for my sleep patterns. Several nights this week, I have found myself lying down at night exhausted and ready to snooze….and once my head hits the pillow, it is as though a switch has been flipped and I am suddenly wide awake! It’s frustrating to lie in bed waiting for Mr. Sandman to come for his nightly visit. To add to my frustration, my father does not understand the concept of quietness. When he gets up between 5am and 6am, it is as though a proverbial bull has been set loose in the house with the emptying of the dishwasher and his grunting. (I know that he is 88 and things probably don’t move very smoothly for him. When I am pulled out of a deep sleep, empathy is not easy to come by.) After his breakfast is finished, he sits in his recliner and begins the long process of clearing his lungs and throat; the acoustics in that spot are VERY good. Most mornings, I swear that he could rouse the dead from their graves with those sounds. LOL!

Those who know me well know that I HATE mornings already, so being wakened does not make for a happy Kennith at all. So you can imagine the level of crabbiness that emerges when I am sleep deprived due to not being able to fall asleep and then abruptly waking after struggling to get to sleep because of all of the noise! Ugh! But, I digress. I only have a few more weeks in the Geriatric Ward before returning to West Texas.

All of this is not only intended to be humorous; it is also a bit of a glimpse into my reading world. I am one of those readers who must have absolute silence to dive into the written word. (You can imagine how challenging it is for me to concentrate in a noisy music department….) If other people are around and quiet, I can read in a public setting. As you have probably derived from my descriptions above, silence is not an option when my dad is around. Truly, I don’t think he realizes the amount of noise that he makes due to his hearing issues. While it is hard to fault him for that, it is still a reality to all of the rest of us in his orbit. That means that my reading life for the past few weeks has been significantly reduced; as the temperature outside rises, Dad is at home more often. And that just means fewer opportunities to bask in the quietness of a lazy afternoon.

There’s a New DNF in Town

Blackout by Connie Willis. This week, I finally admitted to myself that forcing myself to read this book was just not worth it. I wasn’t enjoying the process and I was feeling guilty that I wasn’t reading the book. So I made the choice to label the book as “Did Not Finish” (DNF). When there’s a book on my reading table that I am “supposed” to read — whether I assigned it to myself or someone else has told me to read it — I stop reading entirely. It’s a bit of a perfectionist mentality that is not healthy for me. I’m not saying Blackout is a bad book; I’m just admitting to myself that it is not a good book for me in this moment. So I let it go after reading nearly 50% of the book so I could shift my focus to things that were more interesting in this moment. I will admit that it took most of the week to finally give myself permission to DNF the book after getting that far into it….perhaps I could just power through in order to just have a finish. Nope! I just had to hear the voice in my head chanting “Too many books, too little time to devote to reading something you are not enjoying.”

What I Am Currently Reading

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (p. 76 of 257) I made a little more progress in this memoir once I allowed myself to DNF Blackout. As I stated earlier, I don’t intend to fly through this book as I am wanting to get to know a little more about the VP Candidate through his writing. This week, I have been struck by the challenges Vance described as his family made their way from rural Kentucky to Middletown, Ohio. Some have attempted to make Vance’s Middletown experience that of a privileged suburban existence. As a person who grew up close to a metropolitan area, I can understand how a few miles geographically can still equate to an enormous gap between the ease and convenience of the city and the poverty and challenges of rural living.

A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers (p. 24 of 497) Several years ago, I gifted a box set of Rivers’ three volume Mark of the Lion series to my mother for Christmas. The books are intimidating because of their size and the historical scope of the saga. A Voice in the Wind is the first of these books and I decided it was finally time for me to find out for myself what they were all about. Even though I only read the first few pages last night before bed, I am definitely hooked and looking forward to this piece of Christian fiction.

The story centers around Hadassah, a young Jewish woman living in 1st century Jerusalem at the height of the Roman occupation. Although other Jews have fled the city, Hadassah’s father insists that the family remain to share their personal accounts of the deity of Christ and the power of His resurrection. Quickly, Hadassah loses her entire family to Roman violence — only surviving as a slave with little hope for release or a rich future.

Rivers’ prose is lyrical and places the reader in the heart of the story. Her characters are created with great care and her attention to detail and historical accuracy is obvious from the beginning. I cannot wait to continue reading about Hadassah’s experiences and watching her courage and faith grow in uncertain circumstances.

That’s what I’ve got for this week. I hope you all have a lovely week of reading as you greet August and all that it entails for us.

~Kennith