Reading

You might have noticed my book tally on the left of the blog. Most of my life, I have been an avid reader--a devourer--of books, but in the last few years something--probably life itself--had gotten in the way of my joy of reading. I do not know what happened. Perhaps I burned out, perhaps I was trying to read books that didn't interest me, perhaps I felt I didn't have time...or perhaps after reading page after page after page of technical information trying to understand the world of telephony and data that I came to resent ANY form of written expression that anyone dared to commit to paper. It's hard to say, but this year I decided to rediscover reading as a form of pure pleasure.

Looking at the list, you will perhaps notice a tendency toward mysteries. I have enjoyed them most of my life (though I didn't discover them as a child and so am perhaps the only child of my generation to read neither a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew book), so I thought they would be the most "fun," which is rather ironic as each of them represents a murder. I have been highly amused by the Hamish Macbeth mysteries by M.C. Beaton. They were recommended to me by a fellow lover of British mysteries, and they are delightful, humorous, and one of the most outrageously improbable series of stories I have encountered. Remember how on the original Star Trek series that the unknown person of Kirk's landing party was always guaranteed to be killed by whatever was lurking on the unknown planet? Sort of the same thing in the books. There are 25 or 26 of them, and they are mostly set in the same small village in Scotland, and whenever there's a newcomer introduced, they are of course, the one to be murdered. Of course, it makes sense as it is a series and killing off 26 cast members is REALLY going to make continuity difficult, but it does get a little bizarre. I've never actually been to Scotland, of course, but I assume that most small villages do not have a murder every 3 months and certainly are unlikely to kill off every newcomer, but I could be wrong. It would start to impact tourism, I would suspect. Maybe they just chalk up the deaths to the Scottish love affair with the calorie & fat explosions of deep-fried Mars bars which cannot do much for health & longevity.

You might have also noticed that I am a bit behind on my goal of reading 100 books for the year. I should be at around 65 books by now, not 56, but I am reading about 7 different books right now. It seems to drive people crazy, but I seldom read only one book at a time. My book club's latest pick is Pat Conroy's Lords of Discipline, and while I believe it to be brilliantly written and one of the best books I've read, it is also a very intense book and has been giving me nightmares about military cadets & hazing & "honor." To compensate, I have also been reading Julia Child's My Life in France, which is sometimes dull, sometimes charming, sometimes funny but NEVER stressful. It makes a nice balance and has so far not given me nightmares about military cadets attending cooking classes.

Not yet, anyway........