Profile of a Reader #sol19

Profile of a Reader #sol19

What I’m reading

July 9, 2019

Several weeks ago I received a Facebook message from a long lost friend.  We haven’t seen or spoken to each other in years.  She and her husband retired to Wisconsin quite a few years ago and from her page, it looks like she enjoys her garden, crafts, her book club, and her grandchildren.  It was surprising to get a direct message from her, but the message itself was  the big surprise.  She said, I read these books with my book club and I thought you might like them too.  Send me your address and I’ll send them to you.  

The next week,  I went to the MFA and the Kelleher Rose Garden with a retired friend from here.  She reached into her bag for a book.  I started to tease her about not going anywhere without a book when she offered it to me saying, You’re the person I knew I could give this book to, the girls (her daughters) wouldn’t understand a reference to George Peppard.  

It might not seem unusual for a literacy coach to be given books by friends.  It’s not even all that usual for friends to share books with each other, but the books themselves made me consider who I am as a reader, what I do like to read, how my reading has evolved, and what I always want to share with friends.

I love my Goodreads profile.  I keep track of books that friends are reading, books I’ve read about, and I try to keep myself on track with my own reading. I find it a good balance that the number of books I have currently read surpasses finally the number I want to read.  I know this is only temporary.  Perhaps you will fill my comments with other books I should add to my growing list.

Like many readers, I think, I have piles and bags and baskets of books in various stages of read, lend, currently reading, and will eventually read.  On the top of my summer to-do list is make a reading plan.  I can’t seem to get through all of my reading.  Something in a book will interest/distract me.  I’ll have to go and look that up and read more about it, then come back to the book.  This habit can really slow a person down, which brings me to my profile.

I believe myself to be a reader that respects research.  I recently read a book, The Editor. The Editor isn’t a particularly long book, a particularly deep book, or honestly a particularly memorable book.  It is a good book.  The most significant way it is a good book is that it’s clear that the writer, Steven Rowley, did his research.  He made his fictionalized story breathe of the almost.  As if he knew me,  he shared his research bibliography at the end of the book.  Points for that.

Back to my gifted books and my profile.  Beth sent me two books,  Save Me the Plums and Where the Crawdads Sing.  I know why she sent me Ruth Reichl’s memoir.  I loved Gourmet Magazine and read many of the copies she mentions in the story.  After Beth sent me the hardcover version, I abandoned my audio and Kindle versions and savored this book out in my garden.  I haven’t read Where the Crawdads Sing yet, but I know why she thought I might like it.  The review says it is reminiscent of Barbara Kingslover.  Beth and I read many of her books together and she continues to be one of my favorite authors.

So here I am finally steeped in my vacation days, surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of reading materials.  This might be heaven.