I haven’t been reading as much as usual. There was a time of my life when my parents would take away my books as punishment and make me fish.
(Today, I dream of summer vacation in Wyoming, fly fishing with family friends, and reading until the sun sets or the mosquitoes drive us indoors. Oh, to be on the Green…)
I’ve fallen into watching a lot of Netflix/Hulu/PBS on my laptop. Downton Abbey, House of Cards, Sherlock, The Call of the Midwife, Castle, etc. Television seems to be better than ever.
I’m making an effort to return to reading. There is something insatiable about a great read — one I drape over my knee while commuting so I can inhale another page at red lights. It has been a good while since I’ve read something that delicious.
I’ve just finished Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and it was entertaining. It wasn’t stop-light fantastic, but it was good and I’m interested in reading more of his writing. This book is young adult fiction, and the first hand account of a young man living among the Spokane Indians on a reservation. He decides to leave his high school for the better “white” school off the res. It is funny, poignant, crude and worth reading. The last 20 pages left me unexpectedly in tears.
“I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. I realized that sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms…”
It is a quick read and I think while at times heavy-handed, Alexie does a great job of expressing the difficulties a teenage boy must have living on an American Indian Reservation.
3.5 bananas, absoloodle
I am currently reading “Snobs” by Julian Fellowes of Downton fame. It is a bit hard to get started because the writing is so British and set on discussing aristocracy. But the soap opera is starting to get juicy, and there are characters named Edith and Isabel, which is easy enough to picture.
One of my many goals of 2014: read more, buy less. I will not own an e-reader or purchase more books until I have done something about the 300 pounds of books I haven’t yet read — but managed to buy. (I’m becoming good friends with the library and borrowing when necessary to stick with this economic resolution.)
Ahem.
~K