Tues Ten 051810: Half-Finished Books

Oh good grief. Do you ever catch a glimpse of your own ridiculousness? Frankly, it happens to me all the time. It happened last night. Yesterday was a difficult and tiring day in many respects, and I was looking to wind down at the end of it. Sometimes one of my wind-down pasttimes is reading. Now, reading and I have been on the outs recently. It’s nothing that reading has done. I have just been focused on other things and my free time has been in short supply. I haven’t finished a book since the adventure I mentioned a while back with Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe in Just Kids. While the book left me a little saturated with 1970s icons, it was a good read with no long-lasting reading baggage.

As an aside, I’ll share two of my favorite quotes from that book…

pg. 40 “… I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.”
What a lovely description of the birth of soul mates. Honestly.

pg. 116 “The politics at Max’s were very similar to high school, except the popular people were not the cheerleaders or football heroes and the prom queen would most certainly be a he, dressed as a she, knowing more about being a she than most she’s.”
Made me laugh out loud. Honestly. (Where Max equals Andy Warhol 70s hang-out.)

Now, back to the list at hand and my reading habits. They’ve been non-habitual lately. Last night after the long day, I was interested in getting reacquainted with the process. I usually have a couple of books in progress when choosing my preferred distraction, and I have a couple of places I keep them. There is a basket under one of our side tables where some reside in hopes of keeping them from Baby Girl’s growing obsession with books, and well, tearing their pages. There is also a small shelf by the fireplace where I keep a few. And, there may be a few laying around where the mail or magazines rest or next to my computer bag. It’s a haphazard storage system at best. Last night I checked all those places to choose a current pre-bedtime selection. Here’s where ridiculous steps in.

Honestly, there were at least ten books that were at various stages of completion. With that number of choices, I was suddenly and completely overwhelmed by making the decision. My effort at relaxing suddenly became an anxious, self-doubting exercise in “which book should I choose.” Ridiculous, I tell you.

Then, an idea occurred to me. I could salvage this ridiculous moment–by sharing it with you. Whoa! with the ten mid-read books. Emphasis on ten. Now, I realize that I’ve been all literary lately, what with the poetry shared last week. I hope you non-pleasure readers won’t take it personally. I’m sure I’ll be back to some new record of ridiculous next week like “things I didn’t know were in my refrigerator.” For now, you’ll have to bear with me.

I give you this week’s Tuesday Ten: Half-Finished Books Laying Around–made even more fun (and possibly more ridiculous) by highlighting their respective “bookmarks” as well. Enjoy!

1. Lost Symbol by Dan Brown — page marked by a day job business card
[On loan from the Queen, but as usual, Dan freaked me out in the first couple of pages and I'm still a little freaked but so up for the cryptography.]

2. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan — page marked by a younger photo of Little Drummer Boy & Bug
[Fictional account of a real-life love affair with the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It has me caught up in being all sentimental about architects and their buildings.]

3. Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott — page marked by its own book jacket at the moment
[A book on faith and its winding, but eventual path. This is where I'll start.]

4. Making the Blue Plate Special by Florence Littauer — page marked by a baby picture of Baby Girl, awww
[A great book on the importance of creating traditions. Made me cry a few times already. Why haven't I finished this?]

5. Called to Worship by Vernon Whaley — page marked by the only true “bookmark” that’s white with a green/white polkadot border and two green, yellow and red turtles plus “Haley” that I cross-stitched on it sometime when I was busy reading Little House in the Big Woods
[A head-bending look at worshipping God using various folks in the Bible as teachers.]

6. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl — page marked by Kroger checkout coupon for $2 off a Duracell battery value pack
[A mystery involving Dante's levels of hell and a serial killer set in the 1800s. I'm scared this one will scare the pants off me, which is probably why it's unfinished.]

7. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann — page marked by a scrap of artwork by Bug
[National Book Award winner I couldn't resist from Barnes and Noble, plus it starts with a dude walking a tightrope between two NYC skyscrapers. Cool.]

8. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott — page marked by a Gatlinburg, TN brochure
[I've loved this book since I learned to read it, and I'm reading it again just for fun. But, seriously, how much fun can one reading Junkie really have with all these choices?]

9. The Key to Your Child’s Heart by Gary Smalley — page marked by a notecard with Walter Anderson blockprint of a cat
[My token parenting book, and it has GREAT insight on how we can inadvertently close up another person's heart. But, it is heavy and thought-provoking and actionable, so it doesn't help me relax.]

10. Robert Frost Poems (anthology) — no pages marked, since I seem to simply pick it up, leaf and read
[This is why he's showing up in posts recently.]

(#17: Grace is on deck. Swing, batter.)