On Reading

       One Thanksgiving, when I was about nine years old, our family gathered at the dining table to have our meal. In one of those semi-awkward silences when every ones mouths were full of mashed potatoes and stuffing, I piped up, "Mom, what's a concubine?" The adults at the table gasped in horror and my mother glared at me sternly. "Have you been reading Pearl S. Buck again, young lady?" We were all embarrassed and later my mother hid all of her books under her bed where I couldn't get to them easily.
       Not like I was a particularly smart or precocious child, but reading good literature was something my mother instilled in me. She rarely even read novels, unless they were something highly acclaimed, by authors she respected. I never saw a Danielle Steele or Harlequin Romance in her posession. She liked to read good books and so that's what I read, when I was able to sneak into her bedroom and read them.
       This weekend I met some women who also loved to read, and we traded good book suggestions, and had a lot of discussion about other not-so-good books, and whether it's worth it to read them. The general consensus was, sometimes yes, sometimes, no. It depends on how much time you put into a lousy book. My mother would roll over in her grave if she knew I had read Fifty Shades of Grey, a not so good but somewhat pornographic novel that spiked my curiosity. My mother read Carl Jung, and Silvia Plath, and biographies of political figures from all over the world. She was into philosphy, religion, and doomed characters with so much intellengence they simply could not find their way in the world.
       The following is a list of books I gleaned from my new friends' suggestions, in case you are also a bookie looking for something new to read: The $80 Champion, Child of God, Random Family, The Sense of an Ending, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Beloved, Glass Castles, and Tiger's Wife.
       I do like to download books on my Kindle, but not all books, because there is something I still like about holding a real book, that smells of ink and paper. At present I am reading a book called Lambs of God, that I bought at a library book sale last week, and since I'm much more into fifty shades of Earl Grey, cuddling up with my book and my cup of tea is about as good as it gets.