Reading for Me

Reading on a regular basis is proving to be more challenging than I had anticipated. When the Geriatrics are at work, I have piano lessons to teach. When they come home for the day, there IS NO WAY to get any reading done! The concept of having silence in the house is completely lost on them. Right now as I am writing this post, the television is murmuring some 25 feet away while they carry on a conversation over the volume of the boob tube! Needless to say, I am fed up and just want to get some reading done!!!!!

So….I’ve gotten about 90 minutes of reading done this week in The Sins of the Fathers. I think my time working my way through The Grapes of Wrath has sadly come to an end. Without prolonged times of quiet available to me, I just can’t get through the book. I’m finding other things to occupy my time since I can’t devote myself to reading, but I am fearful that I will get out of the habit of daily reading in the process. I worked so hard to train myself to spend some time every day with my nose in a book. But I’ve also learned that I can only successfully do that without distraction. I’m not a reader who can make significant progress if there is the slightest bit of noise going on in my environment. So….my updates for the next few weeks may just be “same song, second verse.” I’m trying to find another solution to get back into a reading routine, but I’m not having much success in that area so far.

I have been a neglectful blogger and reader recently. Last weekend, I struggled with a cough, congestion, and body aches. In our current climate, you know that I feared the worst diagnosis. Thankfully, when I was able to get into the doctor on Tuesday, it was only a sinus infection.

Needless to say, while sick, I didn’t feel like doing much reading. I am continuing to work my way through The Grapes of Wrath and began reading Sins of the Father by Jeffrey Archer, the second volume of the Clifton Chronicles.

Yesterday, I made the long drive to eastern Arkansas to spend the summer with my parents. While driving home, I made my way through Tan France’s audio book Naturally Tan. It was an entertaining read that addressed his life as a gay man and his experiences as a Pakistani man facing discrimination based upon the color of his skin. His discussion of life after 9/11 from the “brown perspective” (his terminology) was incredibly insightful and eloquent.

After reading the memoirs by both Jonathan Van Ness and Karamo Brown, I had a certain expectation in mind. Naturally Tan was a different kind of memoir — not that I expected all of the boys’ writings to be the same — and I found myself laughing and crying with Tan throughout the long drive. The added features with his close friend and fellow cast mate, Antoni Porowski, were charming celebrations of the joy of friendship.

Woo hoo! The spring 2020 semester is finally over and I am officially on summer vacation! It doesn’t really feel like it yet as I am still in Plainview at the moment — have some work that needs to be taken care of this week — and not entirely sure if a trip to the Geriatric Ward this summer is really wise given the world’s uncertainty regarding the Coronavirus.

Despite a full schedule this week, I did manage to complete one of my reads earlier today. Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a phenomenal read that should be required reading for parents, teachers, and anyone who finds themselves in a leadership role. I will post my complete review on this work later this weekend, but for now — GO BUY THIS BOOK!

The novel I am currently reading has not beckoned this week. The Grapes of Wrath just takes too much brain power that I do not currently have. I’m not sure if it is end of the semester haze or what. I think I will try to focus my reading on Steinbeck’s novel this week to see if I can make some real progress in the book and maybe find a little more connection with the characters. In fairness, I am only 200 pages into the book and the Joads are in the early stages of their trip west. I know it’s a great book….I’m just struggling to jump into it at the moment.

Finals have begun in west Texas. Alas, I have no completed reading projects to report this week. Still, my reading life has continued — even if it has taken on a slower pace for the moment.

On Sunday, I began reading John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath. I was struck by the lyricism of his voice and the rhythm of his prose. I was quickly lulled into adopting a slower reading pace that allows me to savor each word. At this slower speed, I am sometimes finding it difficult to find enough time to make it through some of Steinbeck’s lengthy chapters. It is just a matter of finding the balance between regularly reading from the novel and not getting lost in some of the extremely wordy descriptions.

I quickly decided this week that I would need something else on my reading table that allowed me to digest more words in a single sitting. I picked up the copy of Grit by Angela Duckworth that has been in my TBR stack for several months. I am fascinated by the topic of the role of perseverance in success and find Duckworth’s writing style very approachable and readable. I don’t normally expect to enjoy these theoretical types of reads, but Grit is proving to be a fun and encouraging read. I’m already beginning to think of ways to work some of this material into my seminar for new freshmen in the Fall.

As the semester comes to a close, I plan to finish reading the Duckworth this week and continue my travels with the Joad family on their way to California. Wish me luck!

It’s a good week when I get to report a completed book. This week is exceptional because I finished two books! That has to be a sign that the spring semester is almost over and summer is on the way.

Early in the week, I finished reading Jon Meacham’s biography, Destiny and Power. It was a wonderful account of the life and presidency of George H.W. Bush. After such a hefty book, I needed something a little lighter. I returned to James Patterson for a “beach read” with The 19th Christmas. It’s hard to believe that I am almost current in the Women’s Murder Club series. The 20th installment was published earlier this year. That will be a welcome respite later this summer when my reading becomes heavy again.

What’s next on my reading pile? Since I anticipate more reading time ahead — and more need to calm my mind during finals — I decided to give myself some diversity and have three books on deck. I rarely read multiple books at the same time, but I’m thinking this might be the right time to do it again. I’ve been looking forward to returning to The Clifton Chronicles for a few weeks, so I will definitely be getting started on the second installment of the series, The Sins of the Father, this week.

As the semester draws to its close, I see lots of students who are stressed out and simply ready for the online semester that was thrust upon them because of COVID-19 to come to an end. I must admit that I am also in that same boat. I just have to hold out until May 9 and then I can begin to breathe a little more deeply. As I prepare to mentor students with the prospect of an uncertain future, I am picking up Angela Duckworth’s highly recommended Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. I am hoping to find insight for myself and my students.

For the past few summers, I have decided to include a classic novel in my reading plan. This year, I’ve decided to return to a work that I first encountered in high school and absolutely hated. I read more works by the author in college and beyond; his other novels have become treasured favorites. Both The Winter of Our Discontent and East of Eden were wonderful reading experiences that forever changed my approach to American literature. So, this summer I am planning a serious read of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. (Since summer is almost here and I am ready to dive in, I decided to get an early start!) My plan is to work through the novel methodically and without a specific timeline. I want to have plenty of time to enjoy Steinbeck’s language and reflect on the images he portrays of early 20th century America. I’ll keep you posted each week on my progress and my reaction since that will be part of “The View from My Reading Chair.”

Another week of quasi-isolation has passed and I am continuing to enjoy spending additional time reading. Unfortunately, this week did not see a completion. That’s generally what happens when I dive into larger works. It takes a little longer for me to plow through them.

Currently, I am reading Jon Meacham’s biography of President George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power. I am a little over 450 pages into this 600 page tome and have found myself mesmerized by the stories and reflections it contains. I just finished reading about the President’s leadership and fears during the military engagements known as Desert Shield and Desert Storm. As I got closer and closer to this portion of the book, I noticed that my reading pace slowed significantly because I was taking time to pause and reflect on my own experiences. I was a freshman in college at the time at Pepperdine University and spent lots of time watching the coverage of the war in the lobby of Dorm 4. Why was I so interested? It had nothing to do with my interest in the American political system (although my time at Pepperdine would forever change my interest in government and my political views). It had more to do with the fact that my older brother — who I really didn’t know very well at the time — had been deployed to Saudi Arabia to help maintain the nation’s planes that provided the first wave of domination. Needless to say, I have had a rather personal response to these last few chapters of Destiny and Power that I have read. I anticipate finishing this outstanding book in the next few days.

What’s next in my reading stack? After bemoaning the fact that I could not borrow books from my local library in last Saturday’s “View” post, I learned that the Plainview Library is actually still open for business! Books can be reserved online and librarians will make curbside deliveries of your books when you arrive. This was awesome news and I needed to check it out for myself! Last weekend, I put in a request for the next volume of James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series that I need to read. On Monday morning, I received a call from the library that my copy of 19th Christmas was ready to be picked up. I got the book later that morning, but have been very good and not peeked inside yet. I know that as soon as I do, I can forget about reading anything else. The Patterson novels are normally fairly quick reads for me, so I should also get to return to the Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles this week as well. Yeah for a happy reading plan!

Life in mostly quarantine has continued without too much interruption to what feels like a normal routine. I have found myself reading more than usual though. So far this week, I have clocked around 8 1/2 hours with my nose in a book. While that’s not unusual for some people, when school is in its regular routine, I am lucky to read for 3 hours during any given week.  It’s still rather early on a Saturday evening right now. I anticipate that my total for the week will exceed 9 hours of reading before all is said and done.

The first portion of the week was devoted to reading Jeffrey Archer’s lovely Only Time Will Tell.  It is the first volume in his Clifton Family Chronicles. You can read more about my enjoyment of the first book in the series by checking out my review that appeared on this site earlier this week. I fully intend to continue making my way through the saga in the coming weeks, but I decided that I should probably tie up some other loose ends in my TBR.

I returned to the biography of Johannes Brahms that I have been “reading” since Christmas. This massive volume was a chore to plow through. Whenever I would actually pick up the book, I had to basically force myself to commit to reading a few pages before returning to something less academic. As I picked up the book again this week, I finally decided that enough was enough. I am not prepping to teach a class on the composer’s life and there are far too many books that I desperately want to read to continue torturing myself with this book because I “think I should.” So, with 200 pages behind me, I removed my bookmark and placed the biography on a high shelf in my apartment. The work is wonderfully written and filled with information for the scholar to glean. This was just not the right time for me to read it.

So now, I was faced with a choice of what to read next. Since we are in quarantine here in Plainview, the public library is closed. That means I actually wanted to return to My Library Shelf project this week and could not. Since I had just put away a biography, I decided to pick up another one from my TBR and began reading Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham. While I am not a historian, I do enjoy reading about our nation’s Presidents and the First Wives. I had a wonderful experience late last year reading a Betty Ford biography that I highly recommend. I’m only about 100 pages into Meacham’s biography and I am enthralled with the Bush story. At this point, George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, have moved to Midland, Texas to begin pursuing work in the oil industry. Their family now includes George, Jr. and Jeb; the last chapter I read was about the tragic death of their daughter, Robin, who died at the age of four from leukemia. It truly was a heart-wrenching tale that I had never heard before.

The biography clocks in at just over 600 pages. That’s a fairly large book for me. However, given my current reading rate at the moment, I am hoping to plow through the work in the coming week and then return to the story of the Clifton family for the second installment of the series.

And with the flick of a pen, my little corner of the world suddenly changed. This week, the community of Plainview, Texas learned that Coronavirus had made its way into our midst. Local government responded and issued a stay-in-place order. Thankfully, my work at the university is considered essential, so I can still get out of the house daily and be surrounded by people…or so I thought. Friday became a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride for me as we learned that Wayland would close down all of its campuses to the public effective immediately. Employees with keys to buildings may continue to access their offices (assuming it is a closed office with a closing door) and work. That’s it — come in, work, and leave. I don’t know exactly how that is going to play out in the weeks ahead, but I’m not looking forward to it at all. Even though I consider myself an introvert, I also suffer from depression and know that isolation from friends is bad news for me. I need to hear laughter and to have some level of physical touch in my life.

But, for right now, I’m managing and maintaining as much normalcy as I can. I’m keeping a relatively stable schedule going and have regular interaction with people virtually through Zoom and lots of phone calls home to the Geriatric Ward. I’m also continuing my adventures in books. This week, I completed Chaim Potok’s wonderful novel, In the Beginning. If you missed it, you can find my review of that novel here.

I finished the Potok on Thursday, I think….all of my days are beginning to run together. I finally decided to dive into the first volume of Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles. I encountered Only Time Will Tell several years ago as an audio book when my work required lots of commuting around Arkansas and Tennessee. The book made a tremendous impact on me and I knew that I wanted to continue the saga of the Clifton family, but I wanted to actually read the books as oppose to merely listen to them. But, I’m not a fan of reading a series while I wait for the latest volumes to appear from publishing houses. Over Christmas, I decided to take a look and found the entire series available as a single package from Amazon for a very reasonable cost. So The Clifton Chronicles have served as the base for a very large TBR stack that lives on the kitchen island in my apartment since I returned from holiday in January. This seemed like the perfect time to break the packaging and open the first book. I’m just getting started really — only about 85 pages in — but I am totally hooked on the story of young Harry Clifton and anxious to see what happens next.

This week’s update took a very different slant from my normal approach to these posts. I suppose I just needed to interact with the silent readers behind the screen. I would love to hear from you though. Don’t just be a silent reader — especially if you have made it this far! Tell me what you are reading at the moment and what is beckoning from your personal TBR stack. Above all, stay safe, care for yourself and each other, and continue to escape the insanity of the COVID-19 pandemic in the pages of a good book.

~Kennith

Life continues to be turned upside down by the Coronavirus pandemic that has taken the nation by storm. Communities large and small have shelter-in-place orders. Restaurants are relegated to takeout and delivery service only. Group meetings of more than 10 are essentially forbidden. Human interaction in America is limited to distances of 6 feet in the name of “social distancing.” This week, classes resumed at Wayland with a significant change — all classes have been transitioned to an online format.

The changes caused by COVID-19 have upturned my routine as well. In an effort to avoid being confined in a small aircraft with possible virus carriers, my parents and I decided the best option for my return to Texas would involve renting a car and driving home. Once I got back, my days were filled with figuring out how to put my classes entirely online and making sure that my students were engaged and that their needs were being met while they were away from the Plainview campus. In spite of all of the changes, I still managed to maintain my reading routine this week.

My time on the road at the beginning of the week was made lighter with the sounds of Julie Andrews reading her memoir Home. What a tremendous book this was. I thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook and finished it shortly after picking up my car from the airport’s long-term parking lot. With the memoir complete, I returned to the pages of Chaim Potok’s In the Beginning. Like most of Potok’s writing, this novel is a challenging read while still rewarding. I’m finding that my reading pace is a little slower as I absorb the words on the page because I simply must be engaged at every turn in order to follow the story line. In the Beginning is set in New York City during the time of the Great Depression as the Jewish community that David Lurie is growing up in comes to terms with the horrors facing Jews in eastern Europe as Hitler and the Nazi party gain strength. It is a historical era that fascinates me. I especially enjoy books that explore the Jewish perspective when it is coupled with their unwavering faith. I’ve read over half of the novel at this point and anticipate finishing it up this week.

So what’s next in my reading stack? I know I need to get back to the Brahms biography I’ve been reading off-and-on all year long. However, the current climate in my community is not lending itself to such scholarly reading. I think I’ll probably dive into the first book of the Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer after finishing up with the Potok.

Another interesting week has come and gone. As I write this post, I realize that I completely forgot to post a review of this week’s completed novel. Oops! I will have to get that taken care of this weekend as well.

The early part of the week saw a lot of reading. I was speed reading through the end of The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Without a doubt, this was one of the best novels I have read this year! Keep your eyes open for a detailed review coming in the next few days. (For real, this time!)

I headed to the library on Monday and picked up another novel from My Library Shelf and started reading. However, it just wasn’t meant to be. As things happened all around me related to the COVID-19 crisis, I found myself needing something that felt a little more familiar and that didn’t cause me to wonder what germs I was introducing into my world. The novel is currently sitting on the front seat of my car and will be dropped at the library today.

I suppose I can’t reference COVID-19 without giving a little more detail. On Thursday afternoon, Wayland announced that it will transition all classes to an online format through April 5. Next week is Spring Break and I’ll be flying home tomorrow morning. Recitals are cancelled everywhere and there will be no rehearsals. Offices are open and we are able to meet in small gatherings (really small!) as needed. We are encouraged to work from home as much as possible.

So it appears that I am going to have more time at home than normal in the coming weeks. Hopefully I can manage to stay healthy this time and maintain some reading patterns while getting work done. That’s why I decided to read some novels that have been calling my name for a while. Last night, I started In the Beginning by Chaim Potok and finally opened the package of Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles that I gave myself as a Christmas gift last year. Only Time Will Tell is the first novel up in that saga. With any luck, I’ll also be able to finish reading the Brahms biography that I’ve been working through since the beginning of the year.

I’m trying to not get too upset about the changes that COVID-19 is bringing to my world. Instead, I’m focusing on the increased time for reading that I think I will have. Now I just need to get things cleaned up around here and get packed. That 5:00am flight is going to come EARLY in the morning….and we all know how much I hate mornings.