William Worcester Churchill - Leisure
I checked out the book more than three weeks ago from the library, thinking I would get a head start on the train to and from Chicago as I served jury duty. Busier times were anticipated closer to our book discussion date. My intentions were good. So filled was mind of all things judicial, however, that I barely cracked the book’s spine on the Metra. Then, we suddenly had some free time that we grabbed like a tiger by the tail and we headed up north. Though Olive Kitteredge came with me, so did that beautiful book on the Brontes, and, well, yesterday had me furiously finishing Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout for our evening discussion.
It is amazing how much reading can be done in between everything else that a day has in store. I felt like a schoolgirl cramming for final exams.
I spent most of my reading time propped on our livingroom couch; the light from the large picture window hugging my back, a cup of tea perched on the coffee table. I don’t always read here. The family room couch, an easy chair in the den, a coffee shop with a latte as fortification, or curled up under the covers late at night is where I’m usually found turning a book’s pages. It is when I need quiet without distractions that I commandeer the living room couch, however. It is a quiet room, away from distraction, and where I get my most ardent reading done.
I finished Olive Kitteridge in due course and we had a lively discussion about it. Have you read it? It is an interesting book, told in a series of short stories, with some wonderful prose. The consensus seemed be “what was this about?”, why was it a Pulitzer prize-winning book, and what’s all the fuss about? Like most books we don’t necessarily like or understand, it prompted a good deal of questions and discussion and that, my dear friend, is what a worthwhile book usually does.
Have you read anything worth discussing of late?
Where do you like to read?
