It's Back!

I read a book!

I got my reading mojo back!

Okay, so what's the big deal? Well, for some reason, I stopped reading about a year ago. It happened the third time I tried reading Diana Gabaldon's An Echo in the Bone. I got about 200 pages in three times, and gave up. I've enjoyed the Outlander series very much, and have really cared about her wonderfully written characters, but at this point I think a strong editor should have done some hacking and hewing. This inability to finish a lengthy book unnerved me. Then I didn't want to read anything. I literally haven't completed a book in over a year, although there have been some false starts.

But a few weekends ago, with eight hours of train travel to sit through, I read one whole book. World War Z. Yep. A zombie apocalypse novel. But if that's what it took, that's what it took. And I enjoyed it! It's a zippy read, and you can see why it's spawning a movie, although I have it on good authority (thank you Mr. E.) that it probably doesn't follow the book too closely. I don't see a role in the book for Brad Pitt, but I'm sure the producers were all over fixing that little problem... one of whom is... Brad Pitt!

Last night I finished the Booker Prize-nominated The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by actress/playwright/author (which makes her pretty darned amazing) Rachel Joyce. A retired man, numbed and dull in his lonely marriage, receives an unexpected letter from an old friend who is dying. He's in England's southwest, she's in the northern most town in England, just south of the Scottish border. He writes a quick, restrained letter and sets out to put it in the corner postbox. Except he doesn't. He walks to the next postbox, and then the next. He keeps walking. I won't say anymore, but I do urge you to read it. It's inspiring, moving, funny and left me in buckets of tears last night when I finished it just before midnight (yesterday's neck crick wasn't helped by reading so long in bed - woke to a full-blown spasm).

Thank you, Barbara, for lending it to me! And thank you, Laura, for lending me Audrey Niffenegger's novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. She wrote The Time-Traveler's Wife, which I raved about here. So I'm excited! I start it tonight.

Reading is a great expander of mind and heart. I am so happy and relieved I'm reading again.