My Reading Plan

As we head into the second half of 2020 I will say that I hope this half is better than the first. If the year keeps its current trajectory I will not be sorry to see it go six months from now. So here's to hoping for an upswing.

I am happy to report that I have been able to return to a pastime that I used to enjoy, reading. I have always liked to read, but once the kids hit middle and high school and our schedule got crazy I rarely had time to read and only managed to squeeze in a book or two a year for the last ten years or so. I missed it but was too busy to miss it at the same time. Now in the last few months I've enjoyed picking up a book and reading some before going to sleep.

I am a slow reader. Always have been. I guess it comes from all the technical reading I have to do. So, I've never enjoyed reading books from a library because I feel like the due date is nipping at my heels from the moment I borrow the book. I do enjoy reading classic works, and since they are in the public domain the price for a digital copy can't be beat. Frankenstein was the first such book to catch my eye so I loaded it on my iPad and dove in. Certainly nothing like the movie, but a good read.

The next book to catch my attention was Treasure Island. I had read it before, but it was fun to tag along with Jim Hawkins on his hunt for buried treasure once again. And when that was done and I was trying to decide what to read next, that's when I thought about my old Authors card game.

My friends and I played this game a lot when we were kids. It was a good, quick game on a rainy or snowy day. Authors plays a lot like Go Fish. There are 44 cards in the deck representing 44 books written by 11 authors. Since Treasure Island was represented on one of these cards I decided to trust my next book to fate or random luck, so I drew a card—The House of the Seven Gables. Also a good story, but I spent half of the book wishing Hawthorne would get to the point. He was certainly not writing for a 21st Century attention span. Once I saw the Pyncheons to their happy ending I went back to my deck of cards and pulled another. This time it was The Pickwick Papers. Hawthorne may be long winded, but he ain't got nothing on Dickens. This book is a serial of 57 short stories about the misadventures of Samuel Pickwick and reads a little like a series of Monty Python sketches from almost two centuries ago.

As you can imagine, my reading plan has elicited a variety of responses from my family. Vicki thinks I am nuts, Jenna is curious to see what I will draw next, Ben just shakes his head, and Nate may be oblivious to the whole thing. I am currently halfway through Tales of a Traveler by Washington Irving, though I have paused that to read The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation which the kids gave me for Father's Day. I don't know if I will make it through the remaining 40 cards in the deck or not. I may have to draw the line on Shakespeare unless I can find his works in the NIV. And when school starts back, and if we have to go back to distance learning, that will put a kabash on the whole thing.

On a different note, our regular mid-summer activities have all been canceled this year. There was no Trash and Treasures in Cross Plains last weekend and there will be no Threshermen's Show in Adams two weeks from now. I have written about our annual Kilgore Remembrance Ceremony that we have each Fourth of July morning. We decided to cancel the in-person event and pre-record a ceremony to be posted online tomorrow morning. So, if you've never been able to attend our Kilgore Remembrance Ceremony you can find it online at the link below any time after 6:00 am CDT tomorrow morning. The video is 20 minutes long and if you watch it I hope it sets the tone for your Independence Day celebration.

https://www.facebook.com/Cross.Plains.TN/

Joe