Reading

I love reading weekends and this one was tailor-made for it. Not quite cold, but close enough. Yellow and red leaves floating to the ground outside the picture window. A clean (enough) house. A comfy, over-stuffed chair. Two-sizes-too-big pajamas. A lap dog. And a big cup of hot chocolate. All boring and cliche, I know.

The first book I read was fiction: Feast of Love by Charles Baxter. The premise was brilliant: a man and a woman telling their very different accounts of a specific event in their relationship. But then new characters came into play and I can’t even explain what happened. What a chore. It was confusing in the worst way. Nothing felt connected. I lost the point, the purpose, the meaning. I kept thinking everything would come together and make sense in the end, but 300 pages later, it never did. I did enjoy crossing it off my to-read list and putting it in my “take to Half Price books to trade” bag, though.

The second book I read was non-fiction: A Book by Desi Arnaz. It was fascinating and surprisingly well written. It was factual and chronological to a fault, yet human, and, at times, funny. He was really just giving an account of his life and all I wanted was a different ending: Lucy and Desi together till the end just like I know Lucy and Ricky were. I wish he’d lived to write his sequel (which he was going to call Another Book).

I finished the weekend watching The Letter, a movie with Bette Davis. Over-acting and dramatization at its 1940s finest. I loved every minute of it.

It is weekends like this I know I’ll miss when I’m dead.