Books

What a beautiful spring day today was! It was warm enough to need just a sweater, no need for a coat.  Jerry had a great time running around, except that he doesn’t like getting his paws wet, and the ground is more mud than grass still.  So he jumped back into the car with wet, muddy feet, and I’m very thankful that I was wearing an old pair of track pants which will be tossed out after this week.  The car seat, though… well, it will need a good brushing when it dries off.  Don is doing a little better, although he has these moments when his knee gives him a problem, but hopefully that won’t last too long.  I wish that I had more energy. Today was one of those days where a long, long walk is a perfect thing to do.  I’d have loved to walk to Parliament Hill, down to the river, and looped back up.  Jerry would have completely enjoyed that, what with all the extra hills to run up and down and maybe chasing a rabbit or a chipmunk tossed in.   Sigh.  If wishes were horses, and all that.

I was looking for a particular book today, and found several others that I haven’t reread in a while.  I’ll confess that the books that I tend to reread are all fiction.  There are very few “serious” books that I find fascinating enough to read more than once (or even to finish the first time through). I try, really I do, to read the “improving” books that are recommended to me regularly by well-meaning people.  My weakness is that I’ll buy one or two, read a couple of chapters, and add them to the shelf while the other books are read, reread, and lovingly shelved elsewhere.  The books on that shelf are easily lent to others, and they are piled on each other.   None of my other books are lent out.  Because people have the distressingly bad habit of not returning books to their original and rightful homes, so to avoid fights, I don’t lend them out.  In full honesty, I have 3 books that belong to others, but I was told to “hang on to these if you like them.”  I’d like to return them, but I have no idea where the original owners are located.  A long time ago, I read one of the Chicken Soup… books, and I enjoyed it.  I tried a few others, with mixed reactions.  About 30% of the stories are mush and should be ignored.  Maybe 20% (generously) are good, meaningful, short stories that have a lasting impact on the reader, and maybe 2-3 are deeply touching.  Perhaps oddly, the book, Chicken soup for the cancer survivor’s soul left me cringing.  It was, IMO, drivel.  I liked Pet Lover’s soul much better, and I kept that one.  I’ve dipped into a couple on theology, which more often than not required too much energy.  I kept a book on the Enneagram because it was fascinating and another on Jung and dream interpretation.  But I have many more by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg and Heinlein, which, surprisingly, I still enjoy reading.  Apart from Asimov’s science fiction books, I enjoy his mystery short stories (the Black Widowers) which (on first reading) are puzzling but much less so on the fifth or sixth reading but still entertaining.   I was looking for one of my C. S. Lewis books today; he’s really one of the easiest to read theologians, and I wanted a moment for my Lenten reading today.   I haven’t found the one I wanted yet, but I was distracted by a couple of other, almost as interesting books.

Anyway, my back is again causing me some unpleasantness, so I’m going to wrap up now and head off.  I wish you all a good night and pleasant dreams.  Take care!