Was there ever really a three book plan? I do yoga and always my yoga teacher, when we are meditating, says when your mind wanders just accept it, acknowledge it, and then go back to the breathe. I do that a lot, because my mind wanders a lot. I am always fretting and this winter more than ever it seems. I am having a hard time being calm. And it is definitely coming out in my reading yet again. Pick, pick, pick. Dip, dip, dip. So many bookish distractions.
Should I share what my night table and bedside and library stacks look like? Now that would be a picture of a wandering mind. I am always looking for some other story even as the books I am in the middle of are entirely absorbing. When I am reading them I want to stay with them. And when I am doing something else, in the middle of a work project, or cooking or some activity that doesn't require intense concentration my mind starts whirling and books cross my minds eye, or I read something and think--I would love to read that. Pull book from shelf. Start reading. Set on pile of books on night table. Watch piles grow and expand and take over. In progress books quickly become lost in the shuffle.
So back to a few of the originals. I am not quite at the point (but contemplate it often) where I take one lone book with me and that it that--all attention directed there. I think about this a lot, don't I? But three books seem manageable to me. I still have a pile on the night table and I can't wait to get back to those as well, but finish one first and move on to the next.
The three main reads right now are Mary Hocking's second novel of the Fairley Family trilogy, Indifferent Strangers set during the days of WWII, Australian author Mira Robertson's coming-of-age tale The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean, which is also set in WWII and the always pleasing Kinsey Millhone, still on I is for Innocent. I missed Kinsey and I wanted to share just a little from this book, because she never fails to bring a smile to my face or a quiet guffaw (and I need as many of those as I can get).
The excerpt I'm going to share is a scene where Kinsey is interviewing a woman in relation to a murder case that is being reopened. I love that Kinsey, and surely this is necessary in her job, has such a great sense of character (and in that I mean understanding of human nature). She picks up on details that others miss (and often there is a sense of humor and self-deprecation involved as well).
"I spotted the woman I assumed to be Rhe Parsons emerging from a small supply closet with a roll of newsprint and a box pf pencils; jeans, a denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a pack of cigarettes visible in her left breast pocket. No makeup, no bra. She wore heavy leather sandals and a hand-tooled leather belt. Her hair was dark, pulled back in a French braid that extended halfway down her back. I placed her in her late thirties and wondered if she'd been to Woodstock once upon a time. I'd seen clips of the concert and I could picture her cavorting barefoot through the mud, stark naked with a joint, her hair down to her waist and daisies painted on her cheek. Growing up had made her crabby, which happens to the best of us. She set the pencils on the counter and carried the newsprint to a big worktable where she began to cut off uniform sheets, using an industrial-size paper cutter. Several students without sketch pads formed a ragged line, waiting for her to finish. She must have sensed my scrutiny. She looked up, catching sight of me, and then went on about her business. I crossed the room and introduced myself. She couldn't have been more pleasant. Perhaps, like many habitually cranky people, her irritation passed in the moment, to be replaced by something sunnier."
Aside from painting quite a good and descriptive picture of Rhe (and Grafton/Kinsey does this with everyone), it made me laugh about what she said about the crabby/crankiness. I feel like that could be me, and I do hope my crappy demeanor is also quickly replaced by something sunnier. This is why I keep coming back to Grafton's books!
I hope to finish this this weekend (and pick up another book from the night table--but will be reaching for letter "J" soon, too). Okay, full disclosure, while these are the three books I am steadily reading, I am still dipping into story collections and my Terry Tempest Williams as those are long-running reads. I'm not in a rush to finish those but I don't want to neglect them entirely either--some books are meant to read a bit of and then let simmer before returning to them, right?