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.