Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Quiet Place

 If I were a productive person, I'd be in my textbooks and using this break to thoroughly read my lessons, something that I have not done for the last couple classes. Another casualty of covid, I suppose, since very suddenly I was homeschooling again. 

That class took the Tuesday between the holidays off, and I'm glad we did. I need a break. I'm at a very dry place. By the time that I'm done with this theology course, I may be an atheist. 

In any case, we have our break, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I vowed to myself to use this time to really get back into the swing of things. 

So.

For the past few nights, I've been tucking myself into bed with 'The God of Small Things'. I love this book, the way that the focus is on one very small period of time, interspersed with glimpses back and glimpses forward, but continually pulling us back to a point in time that seems to be pivotal for every character in the book. 

Like a Salman Rushdie book, the unfamiliar names initially slowed me down a lot. When I read books like this,  I have to actually write the names down with a diagram of how they are related to Rahel and Estha, the focal characters, but once I got them straight in my head, the story flows beautifully, back and forth, present, future, past. 

A quiet space in these crazy times. Yesterday, our little newspaper had two pages of obituaries. In a county of 39,100, our covid cases have more than quadrupled this month. 

There is something very luxurious about laying in bed with a good book and reading myself to sleep every night. I read until I am drowsy, set the book on the nightstand, and then click off the reading lamp. 



9 comments:

  1. I have started The God of Small Things 4 times.

    Each time I have got as far as the cinema and another book comes and gazumps it.

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  2. Sounds like you have found a good way of passing the long winter nights. I read more blogs than books these days.

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  3. I think your taking a break is a good thing, sort of a Sabbath Rest, if you will. Try to relax and enjoy it.

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  4. I loved "The God of Small Things" when I first read it many years ago. I read Arundhati Roy's second novel, which came out a couple of years back, but it didn't have the same magic.

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  5. I do the same thing at night. I'm usually reading two or three books at the same time, so I read whichever catches my fancy or a bit of all of them. I've never read that book.

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  6. I'm currently reading books on foraging. It's amazing how much we can find to eat in the hedgerows even in the middle of winter when we know what we are looking for

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  7. Lucky you! My mother taught me to always go to the loo before sleeping, so if I read until I'm sleepy, I still MUST got to the loo which wakes me up!

    Reading and sewing is keeping me sane.

    Hugs!

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  8. I've always got books waiting for me to read. It's one one my pleasures. Arilx

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  9. They do say that for some, atheism begins when they actually read the bible. I do speak as an atheist who has read it but that was bot the cause in my case.

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