When I’m Reading A Book

Reading has always been something i have enjoyed tremendously. My parents knew how to peek my interest in books. They were members of a book club and got books in the mail every month. They read fairy tales to me like the ones by the Brothers Grimm, which I later discovered are not unknown in North America either. Certain stories they read to me over and over and over again. At last I could recite some of these stories myself. And…. no wonder I started to read them myself. That was all well before I ever got to school. Every birthday, every Christmas there were presents containing books. I read them all, regardless how complex they were. I plowed through 800 pages and never did I rest before I had turned the last page. I enrolled in our city library, got a readers card and went there every week. I hauled away volumes and made sure I was never late returning them. When we were about to make our move to Canada we had to downsize our book collections. I recall that I dropped off boxes in the local city library. A good deal of them were in German, the rest mostly in Norwegian. We still had a load of books with us over to North America. Books are heavy and not so cheap to ship, so we made sure we shipped only those we wanted to keep. So reading is something I still do – when I have an interesting book.  My problem is that I have a short patience. Some books are simply “starting off on the wrong foot”, meaning they bore the living hell out of me on the first 100 pages. Then it happens I leave that book alone. In my disappointment I then can go without a book for weeks – until I slump across something Bea has brought home from the library or some book I got from a friend that is promising hellfire excitement on the first 10 pages. If I come across something like that, I do not rest until I have devoured it completely. Lately I have had a couple of those. Lately I also have neglected daily routines (like blogging) for the sake of a book I read. My last bears the title: “Pale Horse Coming” by Stephen Hunter. At first I didn’t think much of the title, but the title is an understatement of the inherent excitement. It is about some nasty Government project during post- WWII times, endorsed by the DIA and the not so great State of Mississippi. So over the last 3 days (it’s a 490-page volume) I have been forsaking a lot of things. Even going to the table to eat was a disturbance. Of course I feel bad about that, for normally I am not happy living a stagnant life in a chair.  I like to be out and about and active. But time was flying by again today when I seated myself on our sunny porch, only rising from the chair for getting a coffee from the kitchen. I’m not even getting hungry over this. But the weekend is over for me. I know you Americans have Columbus day tomorrow and we still have a Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, but I have plans for tomorrow and reading is not a part of it. (I finished that Hunter book) I will get myself into active mode and march off into the woods with my Husquarna chainsaw.  I’m gonna put down a few trees. Big ones! Thanks for READING!