What I am reading

What am I reading? Well, I thought you'd never ask.

Just finished An Infinity of Little Hours for the RGBP's book club, which I found both infuriating and fascinating. I would love to hear the perspective of someone not religious on the story. Basically, I ended the book thinking, "those hermit guys are just trying to do what we're all trying to do - figure out themselves, other people and God IN THAT ORDER - but they're doing it in an unnecessarily uncomfortable way." Which is surely not the message they would like me to take from it.

Am in the middle of, thanks to Katherine, The Solace of Leaving Early, which I am trying not read too fast since I am lovvvvvving it so much. I'm afraid I'm going to get heartbroken, though. Am I? Am I? Katherine? I should probably have a whole entry in which I just quote the funny and true things from this book that I want to remember forever, but for now I'll just say that, even though I am having a hard time liking the characters, I cant help but love them. And the writing is great.

Just listened on tape in the car to Michael Palin's Full Circle, about his journey around the Pacific. You might know of this from the television machine. I enjoyed it, but it was very different than what I usually read, which is sort of the Eat Pray Love school of travel writing ("Let me tell you about me, and my feelings as I walked..."). His lack of self-reflection was, in fact, startling. His wife was very ill during the trip, and he mentioned it, but not in the "then I was changed forever as I considered how her life hung in the balance under the surgeon's knife..." sort of way. More in the British "let's get this over with" matter of fact sort of way. Anyway, once I got used to it, it was refreshing to experience straight up travelogue about someone's observations, information about history and geography and missed flights.

I admit rather sheepishly that I am currently listening to Dorothy Gilman's The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, which is not at all edifying, has a plot full of holes and is probably also racist, if part of racism is having amusing and violent yet dimwitted foreign side-kicks. Definately not WWJR (What Would Jesus Read) material. However. It is short. And it makes the drive go faster. And I dont have to concentrate too hard on it when I should be thinking about traffic. And I do want to know how it's all going to work out, so it must not be ALL bad.

Ok, forget my silly car tape habits. Let's talk some more about reading. After losing my hearing aids for 36 frustrating hours, I am going to try to get back into Getting Things Done. I really do want to be more organized. Really, really do. Because I ahve better things to do than spend the weekend looking for my hearing aids, which are right where I put them in the medicine cabinet the whole time.

And, am reading, last chapters first but planning on devouring it all, and LOVING Anna Carter Florence's book, Preaching as Testimony. Thanks PPB - you were right. It is JUST the thing.