For the Love of a Good Book
I just love me a good book. I like it so much when they grab me and don’t let go and keep me up all night. And sometimes when I get hooked on a book, I become irresponsible. When I was a young mother with babies and toddlers, then children and teenagers, if I had an engaging book to read they’d be neglected. Later, when I found myself caught up in careers and had deadlines to meet, well, I learned how to work under pressure.
If the author has wielded her magic, I can be there, right in the setting, having dinner with the characters, being part of their witty conversations, dancing the night away at their raucous parties. When the last page is finished and the book gets shut, I am bereft. The light has gone out and I am without a friend. I need to have books at the ready so that I don’t get lonely.
Well, lately I’ve been starving and lonely and literarily stymied. Then I heard that Pat Conroy died, so I went and got a couple of his books to read, since I liked his Beach Music. I got My Losing Season and The Great Santini from the library and forced myself through one and a half of them. Awful stuff, and I won’t bore you to tears with the tedious reasons why his drivel isn’t worth reading.
Suffice it to say that I feel like I’ve been on a desert island as far as reading material is concerned.
A few months ago I was in a very cool second hand book store, and found a book with a title that caught my eye and mind: Can’t Find my Way Home : America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945—2000, by Martin Torgoff. I started reading it, and thought, meh, and put it aside for several months. So, during the drought of great reads, I picked it up again—as the title just resonates with me. And now I’m learning from the author, and learning about what sort of things were going on in my childhood and beyond, when it seems that I must’ve been hanging out in the wrong circles. I’d like to identify with my peers, or at least come to some sort of common ground with them, you know?
It’s not a page turner, and given the reams of deadlines I’ve had to face lately, that’s a good thing. But it’s going to be my companion for the next few weeks.
After that? I’m always open for suggestions, and have actually been taking notes on what the other bloggers have been reading; gotta keep up—if not on the treadmill, then with the turning of pages.
