I go through periods where I'm consumed with a Need to Read. Which is to say, I am most definitely suffering through one of those phases right now. I can't get to bed at a reasonable hour and my contact lenses are a shriveled mess when I pull them off my eyes at 11:30pm. I cheat and extend afternoon rest time for another 5 or 10 minutes so that I can read just a few more pages. I turn on the bedside light at 6:30am, just after Mike has taken Colin into the living room for their morning playtime, and push my eyelids open to try and suck in a few more paragraphs.
Of course, not every literary endeavor turns out to be a good one, and what I've finally learned... at the wise age of 34 (!)... is that one need not finish every book one starts. It's true!!! You're not a quitter. You're just a savvy reader. Life is too short to read books that you don't like. (Note that I don't say "bad" lit. I definitely enjoy trash when I'm in the mood for it.)
I just finished Ann Patchett's State of Wonder.
So, what awaits my attention in the reading stack right now?
The Substance of Style: How Singing Creates Sound in Lieder Recordings, 1902-1939 by Rebecca M. Plack (a friend's long-anticipated dissertation from her PhD in Musicology at Cornell Univ!)
Clara Schumann by Nancy B. Reich
The Naked Voice by W. Stephen Smith
French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
This Old House Magazine
Country Living Magazine
Martha Stewart Living Magazine
Words words words. I love words.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would look like today if I'd taken that job with Sunset magazine as a copy editing assistant many years ago...
But I'm wasting time that could be spent reading right now. Must run. To my tea cup and the nearest book available.
