TO READ

Sometimes it's a list in one of my notebooks, sometimes the books I pass on our shelves, the ones I always meant to but never quite got around to. There are the books that were too heavy to read in bed, the ones that didn't work for my mood at the time, the ones that got sidelined by something more compelling, more comforting, more. I go through phases with books, returning time and again to my comfort reads. The books I go to when I'm ill, tired, sad. Childhood favourites or all-out trash, books that cosset rather than challenge. I can admit to 'Anne of Green Gables' and 'Pride and Prejudice'; the ones I'm slightly ashamed to love sit in the second layer of the bookshelves.

I read 'Beautiful Ruins' last week. I started it at Christmas, read a few pages, put it down. I came back to it and ran through it, crying at the end, wondering why I had waited. I moved on to 'Friday Night Lights' and again have been rushing, wanting to know what happened to these boys, suspecting that the glory days of High School faded into, maybe, sadly, nothing. I read too quickly in my hurry to find out. Chris always says that I can't possibly read books properly, that it's all too fast. He may be right, but that sweet abandonment to the story is so good that I can't resist. 

I'm reading 'The Goldfinch' next.