My Kindle. Jen got it for me early on in those two+ years of bean and spine surgeries, inpatient rehab stints and proton radiation. She helped me connect it to the library too. Not only am I saving a shit-ton of buckos by borrowing, not buying, books, I don’t have to fumble around with a damn magnifying glass to see the, now tiny-to-me, text. My eyesight has been going steadily downhill over the last ten years. Some of that’s due to aging. Most is rooted in the inevitable nerve damage from my motherfucking endless brain slice-ups. That and the soothing and protective drops and gels I need to put in throughout the day—they tend to cloud up the old vision.
With the Kindle I can increase the font size to whatever works best on a given day. I can brighten or dim the background, the "paper." I don’t need bookmarks (it opens to precisely where I’ve left off) and it's just the right size and weight. Nifty as all hell, no?
Back to books, bookstores and the Boston Public Library though—while it’s an annoyance to wait for the latest MUST READ to finally become available at the library, queuing up online, in the comfort of my own home, beats the hell out of driving to the nearest town with a book shop. Also, checking books out online means I don't have to risk contracting the latest airborne plague. Sweet!
Anotha' thing, I’m no longer spending big cheddar on reading matter OR having to find space to store all these books. Our house, while a very, very fine house is most def not big enough to accommodate the reading matter I’ve gone through during these latest surgery-a-thons and the ongoing rehab years.
What am I reading now?
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life. (source)
And ...
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo.
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. (source)
Sounds deep, impossibly bleak and I’ll bet there aren’t any spaceships or alien werewolves in it either. But HEY it’s set on the Cape!
Today I'm thankful for my Kindle.
I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
That the deity that kills for pleasure will also heal,
That in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion will pick your soul up gently
by the nape of the neck,
And caress you into darkness and paradise.
~ Louise Penny, All the Devils Are Here
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