I sit here in my library/office/sunroom at a built-in desk with a large screen tracking news or showing movies and a smaller screen displaying my current reading and an even smaller screen flashing notifications and announcements. But then on the wall on ether side of my desk there are hundreds of real ink and paper books I want to read but my aging eyes balk at.
Often I just sit at my desk and, like circling wishes in the Sears Christmas catalogue [RIP], mentally adding books I want to take down from the shelves, open flat on the desk, adjust my desk lamp, and absorb myself in the text.
On any month I have several disturbances to my regular reading plans, some I fight off and others I give into.
This last month has been a bit of a disaster: first there was that naughty boy named hurricane Michael that was aimed right at my fortress/library/office/sunroom forcing the whole family to run off to Atlanta where I ruminated in a hotel room eating soup warmed in the microwave. Then after returning to Tallahassee, we had no tree damage (which was common up and down the block) but we had to endure two more days without electricity (no lights, no computers, no breathing assistance, no cold beverages, no radio, none of the comforts or necessities I was used to.
Then I got sick again: slight fever, very weak: a pneumonia scare. So off to the hospital and although they initially were intending to admit me they eventually ruled I might just be sick like a normal person and sent me home with some antibiotics.
Next day I was fine … and much stronger.
But all in all, October was a less than satisfactory month, for reading as well as for comfort.
So this month I decided to kill the reading list and go commando. The pool started with only the book I was reading at the start of the month and one or two others for reading at alternate locations and on alternate devices. I have been leaning back in my desk chair scanning the titles on the shelves and am actually excited that I might make a hole in the stack or that I might fill-in some of the works of a favorite author or even a not-favorite author (thinking of you, Henry James).
Let’s see how it goes.
A Celebration of Reading 
Winging it! That’s pretty much how I read, Mike. When I make lists, for whatever reason, I rarely get to more than two max and often just one.
LikeLike