Reading for Pleasure

I am a book worm.  I have always been a book worm, and I will always be a book worm.  It was a sad realization for me recently when I concluded that there are not enough hours in my lifetime for me to read everything I want to read and learn everything I would like to learn.  I could easily wile away my days curled up almost anywhere consuming book after book, article after article, blog post after blog post, and novel after novel.  I love to read almost anything I can get my hands on.  It gives me great pleasure.

Being a mom of ten and a nana to nearly a bakers dozen of wee ones it has also sadly dawned on me that there are rarely enough hours within my day to feed my need to read even just a little.  This current season of my life finds me wanting desperately in the word bank department.  I am one of those people that typically has a bookmark of some sort tucked inside a half dozen or more books at any given moment.  I won't even begin to try to figure out how long it took me to finish the last novel I read.  It had been so long that when I picked up the next book to read today I discovered that it was already marked nearly 30 pages in.  Stumbling on this always leaves me in a quandary.  You see, I really didn't remember having read those 30 or so pages, but I knew that I would remember the story if I started reading again.  So in lies my dilemma.  Do I start over and spend precious time re-reading the story, or do I try to move forward from where I left off and hope I could pick the story back up?  This time I opted to read from the beginning.  I am glad I did.  As I predicted I did remember the story after I started reading, so I skimmed a little where I remembered well and read more in depth where I didn't.  No harm, no foul.

The book I just finished reading is titled The Language of Sycamores by Lisa Wingate.  I so thoroughly enjoyed it that I actually plan to look for more titles by this author.  I don't often do that, so that is a big plug from me.  The Language of Sycamores is quite the treasure.  Our local party store in our little small town, so small we don't even have a gas station, is just around the corner from our home.  They have a little lending library there, and I grabbed it on a whim last summer.  Well, you probably noticed that summer is right around the corner again.  So, yeah, that's how long it took me to read it, which is a total and complete reflection on the season of my life, and nowhere near a reflection on the writings of Lisa Wingate.  Did I mention yet that I LOVED this book?  Well, I really did love it!

Karen is a middle-aged career woman totally caught up in the rat race of career and marriage.  She is ignoring some important aspects of her life when something big and unexpected takes place that knocks her off her feet and gets her full attention.  This sudden change has far reaching implications that she never could have imagined.  Through self-discovery, soul searching, family history, and a few other unexpected sources her life is diverted and changed in a way she never could have imagined.  Whenever I was without this book in my hands I was wondering about the characters and what was in store for them next.  It was thought provoking and touching in a very timely way for me.  I highly recommend it to anyone.  It would make an excellent summer read.  Under normal circumstances I could have easily read it in a night, or at the very least during a few lazy days at the beach or campground.  If only I had had that opportunity.  Ahhh...a girl can dream...

I am excited to continue my efforts of adding fiction back into my reading rotation with Irish Princess by Mickey Clement.  There are many characters present at the onset, and I love being steeped in American-Irish culture.  There's a little more watering of my roots going on with this novel.  You'll have to check back later, hopefully not next year, to learn what I think of this one.  With any luck, I may actually finish it by the end of the weekend.  Again, a girl can dream!