I thought I'd do a little post today about the pile of books beside our bed--the books from which I try to read a bit each night. I'll deal with them in the order I read them--10 pp or so in each.
- Wilkie Collins' The Evil Genius (1886), one of his last novels. I've been slowly reading my way through all of Collins' novels, pretty much in the order he wrote them. Two exceptions: I first read his two most famous ones (The Woman in White, 1859, and The Moonstone, 1868), and then, ensnared, I've been reading all the others. He was a friend and colleague of Charles Dickens--and they even wrote some things together. Very talented. Moonstone, by the way, is one of the first detective novels.
- Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light (2020), the concluding volume in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, an advisor to Henry VIII. The other two were Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), both of which won major literary prizes (and, yes, I read them when they came out).
- I just started a couple of days ago physicist Brian Greene's latest (for general readers), Until the End of Time (2020), a book about, well, the end of the universe (it's not right now--despite how we all may feel!). I've always tried to have one science book in my pile. I don't understand everything that I read, but I am grateful for what I do. Greene writes very well and manages to make clear, even to a science-doofus like me, the key points he's making, the key information he's sharing.
- Courtesy of Joyce--Wesley the Owl, 2008, by Stacey O'Brien, a book about her living 19 years with a barn owl in her house. (That's right: You heard me.) I'm about to finish this one, and Wesley is nearing the end of his life, which, in owl years, is about 120 of ours. Very informative and touching--a book that Joyce loved (and she adores birds) and passed on to me. We do that often, Joyce and I, urge books on the other. Right now she's reading an Ian McEwan novel I read and liked (The Innocent) and says she will next read Maggie O'Farrell's new (and wonderful) novel, Hamnet, about the short life and death of the Bard's son--and so much else.
- Len Spacek is a teacher who replaced me at Harmon School when I retired in 1997. He's still in the system, and he's published a couple of books. His new one--Game On!--is a collection of short stories about sports, season by season. I'm now reading the story about a high-school track team--and its performance at the state meet. Len does a fine job of getting inside his characters' heads, of knowing the jargon of the sport he's writing about, of describing how athletes are human beings, not robots. BTW: The first story involves the Garrettsville G-men from James A. Garfield High School, where my mom taught for 10 years (1956-66), where my younger brother graduated (1966).
- I'm also reading a couple of books on my Kindle each evening
- Because of my friend Chris I've been reading through the Tony Hill-Carol Jordan novels by Val McDermid (a woman, as Chris informed me when I told him I was enjoying his novels). This one is Beneath the Bleeding (2007), which deals with the murder of a gifted and popular soccer player. Among other things. McDermid's writing can get tense, so, being a wimp, I need to ... pace ... myself ... to ... avoid ... a ... heart ... attack.
- The final one is an early novel by Ken Bruen (whose Jack Taylor novels I read because of the TV series based on them). (Again, I must blame Chris for the new batch I'm reading.) I'm not about to finish the third in his The White Trilogy--The McDead (2000). I love his style: brief chapters, lots of dialogue ... perfect way to end the day--though some of his grimness remains to color my dreams later on.
People have asked me, by the way: How do you read more than one book at a time? How do you keep track of it all.
I have only one answer: I have no idea.
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