Everyday Canvas

Hooked on Books

Prompt: "There is no enjoyment like reading." Jane Austen With this in mind, what books will you be reading this spring and summer?

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It is impossible for me to say which specific books I’ll read because I always read several books concurrently, such as those in the computer, the ones in print,and two or three in my four different e-book readers. I also listen to audio books quite often. I have more than 3000 unread books in my Kindle library; some of those are classics that I didn’t read earlier. One of them is Mark Twain’s Journal Writings, which is the next book I’ll start reading, as I made up my mind to read one classic per three contemporary books.

Reading the classics isn’t always easy because their dull and dated beginnings annoy me. I wanted to read again Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, since I had read it while in my teens and I have only a shadow of its plot in my mind, but the first page was so tedious. Books that give the family history for pages at a time before introducing the characters have become mind-numbing for me. It wasn’t always so. I used to enjoy them. I guess people and their tastes change with time. What hasn’t changed, however, is my love of reading.

In each book batch, I try to add at least a couple of genre books, one literary fiction or a classic or both, and one or two non-fiction books. At the moment, I am reading US History’s Greatest Hits by Hans Thayer, Diana Gabaldon’s latest in the Outlander Series, Written in my Own Heart’s Blood, Kaleidoscope Hearts by Claire Contreras, AP’s 2015 Stylebook, Sydney Sheldon’s Tell Me Your Dreams, and Memory Theater by Simon Critchley. The Stylebook is really a reference book, but I like to read reference books from beginning to end before I use them as references; this way, I know what’s inside them if I need to search for something..

In a little while, because waiting rooms are also my reading rooms, I’ll be reading again as my husband has an appointment at the doctor’s office. I might be able to finish the Sydney Sheldon novel, since I am at the end of it, and I’ll probably make headway with Kaleidoscope Hearts.

As a note to those who like audio books, YouTube has many good audio books. If you have an app that changes a YouTube video or audio into MP3, you can convert those and listen to them in any I-POD or MP3 player. I listen to a lot of free books in a tiny MP3 player, which fits into a shirt pocket, while I work around the house or go walking.