Today I decided
I don’t read enough.
I used to read voraciously - anything and everything that came within reach. Books, newspapers, backs of cereal packets if there was nothing else to hand. I lost days and weeks to David Eddings, Tom Clancy, Joseph Heller, CS Lewis, Jean M Auel, Dick Francis, Raymond E Feist, Robert Adams, countless authors whose names I’ve shamefully forgotten but whose stories live on in my head.
And yet lately, I’ve read nothing. The last book I read was Northern Lights. And that was this time last year. I haven’t read the Harry Potter series. The only things I seem to read lately are cookbooks and websites.
When I read, though, the house could fall down around my ears and the world stop. I’d just flick the dust off the page and keep going. When you have four children, you can’t allow yourself to be so totally consumed by something. I’m sure that’s why I’ve not dared pick up the Philosopher’s Stone. I’ve seen the way those books remove sane thought and behaviour from reasonable folks. My children would starve and the bloke sue for neglect should I delve into the world of Hogwarts. And that box set of seven Chris Ryan? If he’s anything like Tom Clancy in his detail and depth, that would lose me another month or so.
However, I’ve decided that I should be reading. If nothing else, just to set an example to the small people. I can issue The Command and the tv goes off, but how am I going to show them what to do with their time if I’ve just got my head buried in the internet?
So instead of diving into something overly gripping, I went and bought three novels by folks I’ve never read before, at Waterstones. I came home with Wife in the North
I just want to get myself back into the habit of reading again. I didn’t honestly choose The End of Mr Y
I’ve started with Wife in the North
350 miles from home, three young children and one very absent husband.
Maybe hormones ate her brain. How else did Judith’s husband persuade her to give up her career and move from her beloved London to Northumberland with two toddlers in tow?
Pregnant with number three, Judith is about to discover that there are one or two things about life in the country that no one told her about: that she’d be making friends with peole who believed in the four horsemen of the apocalypse; that running out of petrol could be a near-death experience; that the closest thing to an ethnic minority would be a redhead.
I’m on page 36, and I’ve laughed out loud three times and wanted to cry once. Not bad, eh?
