Episode #133: Dad Thinks Reading Should Fill The Emptiness Of One's Mind

In a bit of a floral mood these past few weeks, since the bulk of my photos have been procured via pounding the pavement and not the mountain. The heat of late has been absolutely BRUTAL, thus the need to simply pound payment in the early morning when it's cooler and shadier, and either the mall or the upper end of my favorite closed off street in the afternoon.

Back in those bad old pre-pre pandemic days, where only a small percentage of the population, including MSM, was suffering very badly from Trump Derangement Syndrome, I was doing my usual schtick of going full immersion into the tsunami that was my book reading.

In fact, my immersion was so complete that in 2018 I decided to keep a quarterly track of what I was reading in my down time. At this point I was reading both fiction and non-fiction, so I was going to the library about once every two weeks or so. For non-fiction, I was reading whatever struck my fancy at that given moment at the library.

For example, the various books included such "scintillating" topics as: a baseball front office, the t.v. show In Living Colour, a serial killer and a memoir about a ye olden tennis player, among others.

For fiction, it was a completely different animal, as instead of reading stand alone volumes, which was never really my thing then or even now, I decided to jump into reading book series. Specifically, murder mysteries.l

So I dove into three different murder mystery series, of which one I do plan on picking up again this year. My public library only had two partials to work with, much to my disappointment as I made my way through. Partial series #1 was a series called Gil Cunningham Murder Mysteries, all which were set in the late Middle Ages, specifically at the very end of the 15th century. Partial series #2 was called Jack Haldean Murder Mysteries, which took place directly after WWI in the UK.

The only long series that I started and want to pick back up and finish to the almost end, is Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mysteries. I got as far as the letter "R" before giving up on my reading experiment. So I only have 7 more volumes to read through. For those of you who think my addition is wrong, Sue Grafton passed away in 2017, and because she was adamant in not using a ghost writer (like Robert Jordan's estate did for his Wheel of Time series), the series ends at the letter "Y".

Like I hinted at, by the time I got out of the summer of 2018, I was becoming a little burned out with my reading. Which is really nothing new with me as I go through cycles with my reading. I don't really remember how much reading I did for 2019, if at all. Anyways, after reading 30 books in the 1Q of 2018, I dropped down to about half in the 2Q 2018, then dropped down to 1/3 in 3Q 2018. And then, nothing.

I do remember the last book read from the public library was in February 2020, and the topic was the entire Last Crusades, so between then and the 2Q 2022, I only cracked open like three books. One was a non-fiction about a 40 year period in the late Middle Ages, and the other two were a few paranormal romance novellas/novels, which I may return to later this year.

I started back up in earnest this year when my public library finally reopened to the general public, and so far the books in question that I had cracked open were on: Nicholas Cage, Dave Grohl's memoir (highly recommend), The Original Sheik (pro wrestling), Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), lawyer/YouTuber Steve Lehto (true crime), and currently reading the forensic sciences of Agatha Christie. No fiction yet, but I hope to fix that once I stop finding good non-fiction to read.

And now, a short update on the Hot Mess manuscript. I have 16 chapters completely transcribed and totaling almost 62k words, with chapter 17 waiting to be transcribed. Plot-wise, I'm closer to halfway than one-third completed, and fast approaching the first of three plateaus/climaxes, so I'm pretty happy about that. And like normal, I've written everything out pen and paper, which helps me to better concentrate on the story with fewer distractions and even fewer chances to just phone it in.

And thus, having completed yet another blog post on time, our anti-hero exits through the side door, stage right.

 

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