Reading for Me

Greetings from the Geriatric Ward in eastern Arkansas! I am so thrilled to finally be at home with my parents to enjoy a little down time after an incredibly exhausting fall semester. Somehow, I managed to get all of my finals given before leaving for the holiday and recorded multiple voice juries. To say it was a busy week would be a bit of an understatement. I’m finding myself quite tired.

This hectic schedule did impact my reading more than I had hoped. However, I have managed to make my way through about two-thirds of my current read: Michael Connelly’s The Black Ice. I decided to return to another mystery featuring Detective Harry Bosch. This novel centers around a police officer’s supposed suicide and a drug scheme involving criminals in Mexicali and sterile fruit flies. (I’m not kidding….sterile fruit flies!)

If all goes well, I should finish reading this novel early in the week and have time to finish another before planning for my return to Texas. Here’s hoping that you see a couple of book reviews in the coming days.

From our house to yours, despite the differences this year will bring, I hope that you have a very Happy Thanksgiving as you reflect on the blessings the last year has brought.

This week, the National Election consumed my thoughts. As we waited to find out results, I was not in a head space to actually do much reading. This weekend, I was able to get away from the noise for a couple of days and dive into my latest read. I’m just glad to say that I have made a little progress and think I will get back on track next week.

What am I reading? I returned to My Library Shelf and picked up House Girl by Tara Conklin. I’m nearly 100 pages into it, so my knowledge of what the book is about is limited at the moment. What I do know is that it is two stories in one novel. Josephine is a house slave in confederate Virginia. Carolina is a modern-day lawyer in New York City who has been hired to try a case involving reparations. I anticipate that the two stories will intersect eventually, but I’ve not gotten there yet. Conklin’s writing is fine, I suppose. I have to decide if my struggles with getting drawn into the story is due to me or the novel itself. Still, I plan to keep plowing ahead and seeing what the book has in store in the week ahead.

There’s good news and not-so-good news to report from my reading chair this week. The good news – I’m returning to a regular reading routine. I’m finding pleasure in the reading process and healing for my mind and spirit. The not-so-good news? While I am reading daily again, I’m not reading with the same voracity and passion that I did just a few short weeks ago. I choose not to refer to this as “bad” news because I am seeing improvement. I know that things will return to “normal” in this area of my life relatively soon.

One of the things that has been a sure sign that reading is returning to normal in my life is the fact that I have been reading two books this week. This has kept me from successfully completing a book since my last posting, but it is doing wonderful things for my routine. What am I reading? With the completion of My Library Shelf (or as much of it as I was willing to read!), it was time to pick another shelf. This shelf of the Unger Library contained some names that I recognized, but haven’t read. Unfortunately, this shelf did not contain a classic novel. (It has been a challenge to find shelves in the Unger Library that fulfilled all of the stipulations to qualify for My Library Shelf project.) It might be a good thing in this season of my life that much of the shelf that I have chosen is fluff. I need a little levity in my life right now.

What am I reading, you ask? From My Library Shelf, I am reading Out of Control by Mary Connealy. It is a romance (can’t believe I am reading another of these willfully) set in the Colorado mountains. The novel opens with a young woman finding herself stranded in a deep cavern when she is rescued by Rafe, a rancher in the area. The plot centers around the questions of how did Julia end up in the cavern, why someone is pursuing her, and if she and Rafe can find love. Published by Bethany House, Out of Control had the suggestion that it would have an element of faith wrapped in it; I struggled to find it in the early portions of the novel. Now that I am reaching the halfway point, the author is much more pronounced in her examination of faith and God’s hand at work in the circumstances in which the characters find themselves.

The other work I am reading came at just the right time in my life. Max Lucado’s latest book is You Are Never Alone. Lucado is a favorite Christian author of mine who consistently finds a way to get to the heart of an issue in a way that always speaks to me personally. You Are Never Alone was written in the earliest days of the current pandemic. Lucado explores the impact of the miracles recorded in the Gospel of John on our modern lives. An early chapter focusing on the miracle at Cana grabbed my heart and reminded me that God truly cares about the smallest details of my life — not just the things of eternal significance — simply because the things that matter to me matter to Him. I am thoroughly enjoying Max’s writing and am purposefully moving through the book at a markedly slower pace because I don’t want to miss any of the treasures the pages hold.

So, I don’t have a full book review to share with you this week. (Maybe I’ll finish Out of Control in the coming days?) But I can report that I am finding peace and restoration right now in the pages of the books I am exploring. That’s a significant and important factor for me to celebrate right now.

Sometimes life is hard and it is simply impossible to sit in a cozy place and read. I’m fighting a little depression at the moment and have not been finding the same joy of reading that is normally such a comfort to me. Instead, I find myself worrying about the future. After trying to put on a happy face for the public throughout the day, the last thing I want to do when I get home is anything that requires mental work. That includes reading. Thankfully, as the week has continued, I have slowly begun to make my way back to my reading chair. I’m not reading as much as I have in the past, but I am at least cracking the covers of my novels once again and trying to return to the love of story.

What am I reading right now? I’m about halfway through Mightier Than the Sword, the 5th volume of the Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer. I am still enjoying the saga and the characters. I just don’t have the energy to actually read. Hopefully things will continue to improve in the days ahead and I will get this book finished in the week ahead.

As readers, we know the power of words to adequately describe emotions and feelings. That’s why I have carefully chosen my words when describing the past week. This week has SUCKED! Perhaps I will explain more in a future post, but right now my emotions are still too raw and I continue to process events.

Because the week has been so bad, reading has not been a priority nor a source of joy. I could not focus on anything, so I attempted to reduce the expectation for daily reading to just completing a chapter. Still, this brought no peace or respite. I think part of the problem had to do with the novel I had chosen. This week, I began reading Small Treasons by Mark Powell. The premise was interesting and Powell’s writing was quite good. The topic of terrorism and the unnatural obsession with it was simply too heavy for my mind right now.

I will be returning Small Treasons to the Unger Library shelf later this weekend and find a lighter read in my personal collection. Right now, I need to read of happy times and the joys of friendship when things are right in the world.

Things have been extremely busy in west Texas this week. Once I got home in the evening, the only thing I really wanted to do was go to bed! Still, I managed to do a little reading each day to keep my reading streak alive.

Early this week, I decided that I needed something a little different from the typical books that I have lying around my apartment. So I headed to Unger Library to pick up a couple of novels. I’m currently working my way through the next installment of the James Patterson Women’s Murder Club Series. I’m over halfway through The 20th Victim, but I just ran out of reading steam this week. Hoping to have a completion in the next few days though. While I was in the library, I decided it was a good time to select another book from My Library Shelf to see if I can get closer to reading my way through the chosen shelf of the local library. The next book I plan to dive into is Small Treasons by Mark Powell.

I wish I had better news to report. There’s not been a lot of reading in my world this week. Lighting in the Geriatric Ward is causing me lots of problems. After spending a couple of months here, I am noticing significant changes in my eyesight. Because of COVID-19, I am finding it difficult to get an appointment with my optometrist. So, I’m not doing much reading at the moment. Eye problems lead to less time doing the things I love. And that results in a poor mental space to live in at the moment.

This week has been a bit of a roller coaster. Things started out quite nicely, but a midweek allergy attack brought on by freshly cut summer grass joined forces with the changing atmospheric pressures of an approaching storm. The resulting migraine completely knocked me off of my feet for 24 hours and chased the thought of reading from my mind for most of the end of the week. I’m thankful that I’m feeling considerably better this evening and slowly getting my nose back into a book.

The week began with a completed read. Book 17 of 2020 was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. It was an excellent young adult novel that addressed race relations and police brutality. While the language was at times too mature for a YA novel in my opinion, I found the plot mesmerizing and an outstanding introduction to these contemporary issues for a white audience. I strongly recommend reading this wonderful novel by a promising author.

As the week progressed, I continued my journey with Harry Clifton and began the third volume of the Clifton Chronicles, The Best Kept Secret. I’ve only read the first 80 pages of the novel, but Harry has already returned to NYC and established his first novel as a best-seller. Upon his return to the UK, he and Emma have successfully adopted a young girl, Jessica, who they believe to be Emma’s half-sister. In typical Jeffrey Archer fashion, The Best Kept Secret is already proving to move rapidly with lots of twists and turns along the way. My hope is that I will finish this installment of the saga this week.

My reading life became a little more normal this week. I found myself wanting to dive back into the world of story. That has been a welcome relief. It took so long after graduate school to really fall in love with reading again. I have always feared that the passion would leave if I did not nurture it on a regular basis. When I begin to see a prolonged drought in my reading life, I get nervous.

This week, I finished Jeffrey Archer’s The Sins of the Father, the second volume of the Clifton Chronicles. You can check out my thoughts on the book here as well as get some quick reviews of my two previous reads. In addition to reading the Archer novel, I also continued making my way through The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I have been surprised that this YA novel has not been a quicker read for me. As I have reflected on it, I think I have begun to understand why.

Don’t get me wrong, The Hate U Give is an outstanding book that should be read by every American interested in race relations from the perspective of our teens. I am mesmerized by the story and am determined to know what happens next in Thomas’ writing. So what’s the problem? I really think it is the fact that I am reading an ebook. I consider myself a modern reader and hated to come to this realization, so I took some time to see if I could unpack why reading electronically has never been a successful or highly pleasurable experience for me.

First things first. When I am at work, my tablet is always in my hand. It is how I check my email and send text messages throughout the day. All of my musical scores are housed there. There is an expectation that I constantly be plugged in and able to be contacted. Therein lies the first problem. When I read a novel, I want to be unplugged, detached from the stress of the day. Even though the content is very different, I think I feel a connection with work and the many easy interruptions that come with reading on my device.

I think there is another element that I had not noticed before that became evident this week. While reading both books, I found myself more engaged with Thomas’ YA novel. But I found myself consistently returning to Archer’s novel that I was reading in paperback. What was the difference? I was always able to see my physical progress through The Sins of the Father with each passing page. As I neared the end of the book, I felt the shifting weight of the plot in both my hands and my emotions. I am motivated to press on through every project — whether work or leisure — when I see visible signs of progress. Sure, I can go to the table of contents of my ebook and see how many chapters remain, but somehow that is not as satisfying for me. After working with a Nook reader when they first appeared on the market, I knew that I maintained my preference for physical books, but could not clearly state why. I enjoy the convenience of digital books. I love having a massive library available at my fingertips. But that convenience still does not trump the joy of feeling the pages against my skin and the tome’s heft in my hands. There’s just nothing that can replace that feeling…and it is not something I am willing to sacrifice at this time in my life.

So this week I plan to intentionally try to make my way through The Hate U Give. I’m also going to start the third book in the Clifton Chronicles. Even now as I look at both “books,” I am drawn to spending time with my paperback, but I feel the “need” to devote time to the work housed in my iPad. The struggle is real.

Reading has been slow this week again. I am finding a lot of relaxation in other activities. Plus, reading pulls me into my thoughts. With the unrest that has settled in our nation this week as well as saying goodbye to a high school colleague, spending time with my imagination was not a healthy place to be. So I’ve made limited progress in my reading. I’m hoping that will change in the new week.

I have continued to work through Sins of the Father by Jeffrey Archer. I have about 200 pages left to go as the adventure continues to center around mistaken identities in New York City and British POWs in Nazi Germany. It’s a fun read despite the settings and the era. I’m anxious to see how things are going to turn out for Harry Clifton and his friends.

I finally admitted to myself this week that reading The Grapes of Wrath was just not a good idea right now. There’s too much sadness and depression in society at the moment that I don’t need to contemplate more hopelessness in Steinbeck’s writing. Perhaps I’ll revisit it later, but for now it is going back on the shelf. When I finally made that decision, I knew I needed to add something else to my reading schedule.

Since I don’t have a large selection available at the moment, I decided to check out some YA novels as ebooks. That’s when I settled on The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I first, I was afraid that this novel would also be too heavy for the moment. I’ve read the first four chapters and I am totally engrossed. You will see why it is an important read for this day. It is the story of Starr Carter, a young African-American girl. While she and her friend, Khalil, are driving home from a local party in the ghetto, they are stopped by a white policeman. The officer becomes upset and forces the male driver from the car. The officer returns to his car to check Khalil’s license and registration but first tells the young black man not to move. Khalil opens the driver’s side door to check on Starr. Shots are fired and Khalil is dead on the pavement. The incident appears to have been unprovoked, but there are rumors that Khalil was selling drugs and may have been under suspicion of possession. Starr must now deal with the trauma of seeing her friend die and decide if she can trust the very ones who have sworn to protect and serve her community. As you can see, it is a riveting read in our current climate. I anticipate that this book will be a quick read because I am so eager to see what happens next. However, I also want to make sure that I maintain a pace where I can contemplate the ideas that Ms. Thomas is raising.

Keep a watch out on the blog this week. In addition to updating on my last two reads (still!), I hope to finish both books before the end of the week. We’ll see how that works out…