Books—How They Mattered to Me This Year

Sept 1, 2023

If you have followed me in the past, you may have noticed I haven’t posted since July 2022.  Often in the summer I get behind making posts about books and I was nine books behind on Aug 31, 2022 when my mother fell and broke her hip.  That fall set off a number of events including hospitalization, hospice, and her death—-on the day of hurricane IAN that damaged both her home and mine.  This led to hurricane issues on top of the usual grief and work associated with death of your remaining parent and the work of getting a club, for which I was president, back on track following COVID complications. 

A year later I am ready to start posting again and begin with this short post about books.

Since that fateful day in August 2022, I have read forty-six books and re-read 3 books (one very long), averaging a little under one per week.  I read (often by listening to audiobooks) while driving, cleaning, preparing things for disposition, and while trying to quiet my mind for sleep.  Sometimes this meant two books a week, and sometimes less (those longer books about family sagas etc).  A number of these were parts of two different series that combine mystery with learning about culture or history.  For each of these series, the same person read each book in the series and this was interestingly comforting.  Some books were non-fiction, but most were fiction.  Some books were for book groups to which I belong that gave focus to preparation for discussions and provided fellowship of shared learning about the book we discussed. 

My main point here is that reading books was an essential part of my life during this time.  Books carried me through this difficult period.  Perhaps it could be called “escape” but I prefer to think of it as “enabling me to deal productively with tough stuff”.

And I continue to read.  And now I will restart writing about what I read.  I will try to minimize the backlog of blogs but it’s tough because the reading is so wonderful.

I wish you all Happy Reading.