Yesterday ... an End

Yesterday morning, about 10:45, I filed my final book review for Kirkus Reviews.* As I wrote here last week, I've been reviewing for them since March 1999.

All week long, as I was reading the book (in .pdf format on my iPad), I realized I was nearing the end, but I tried to suppress that thought--keep it down--so that I could function. I'd started reading it and taking notes the Friday afternoon before. My custom was to read 20 pages on Friday-Saturday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday afternoons, a six-day strategy that allowed me to "cut" 120 pages from the total I would read in the mornings throughout the week. I began reading bigger chunks of this final book on Wednesday morning and read 75 pp/day on Wed, Thurs, Fri mornings. Again, my habit has been to arrange my Kirkus reading so that I finished each book on Friday morning, at which time I write/file the review with my editor on the Kirkus website.

As I sat down to write yesterday morning, I again tried to focus entirely on the composition of the review and not think about ... the end.

But when I finished and proofread and made some changes and uploaded the review to the site and clicked Send, I felt that surge of emotion break through the flimsy dam I'd created during the week. I wept.

Tears in my eyes, I headed upstairs to tell Joyce I was done--and she said she'd been thinking about me, down in my study. She even said she'd thought of coming down to watch but realized she didn't want to distract me. And she said some other loving things.

This final one was review #1563 I've done for Kirkus in the last twenty-one years. When I saw the total, I was a little sad I'd not done one more--1564, the year the Bard was born. But I consoled myself with this thought: Since he was born in April that year, he was conceived in 1563. So there!

As I said in my previous post, I've retired from Kirkus because I'm about to head into a new course of medications and treatments for my cancer, and they are likely to have some deleterious side-effects, effects that very well could render me unable to focus and concentrate the way I need to in order to read and review a book. I do not want to accept an assignment and then be unable to complete it.

So, it seems, my book-reviewing career is now over--both for the Plain Dealer and Kirkus. I do have a longer review I've sent to another publication, but I've not heard from them in over a month, so I'm guessing they're not going to run it. If they don't, I'll post it here.

When COVID-19 arrived, I no longer could go to Open Door Coffee Co., where I usually did my morning Kirkus reading. Instead, I was here at home with some Keurig coffee.

I also did that when Open Door was closed for one reason or another--like Christmas Day, which is when Joyce sneaked a picture of me, reading and taking notes. So I'll end with that--and with an expression of my great gratitude for the opportunities I've had to participate for so long in the book-reviewing world.


*As I've said before, Kirkus reviews are anonymous (though reviewers' names are listed in the publication), so I can't tell you what my final book was.

Christmas Day, 2019