Sickness Reading

My appetite for books has been even more voracious since I got pregnant.  I’m sick, especially in the evening, so I read.  I sit in the recliner or on the couch while the children sword-fight around me and I read.  I read to keep my mind off of how bad I feel and I read because, as much as it is a leisure activity, I still feel like I accomplish something when I finish a book.  Which is kind of dumb, because doing the dishes and playing with my important little men would be accomplishing something.  But there you have it.  Distraction.  I’ll (hopefully) feel better soon and then I’ll spend the evenings in a flurry of dinner-making and children’s book-reading and pretend-playing (Jamie and Charles like to “make” food for me – pretend food – and bring it to me to “gobble” up.  Little do they know that sometimes the mere thought of that pretend hamburger and fries makes me gag).

 

In the past few months, I have read several books I would recommend to you, dear friends.  If you like that sort of thing, go ahead and read the Game of Thrones series.  I read the first two books, and while I wasn’t overly impressed with them, they passed the time.  A friend of mine pointed out that the women were portrayed really terribly, and it’s true.  But there’s intrigue and politics and I might even keep reading for more dragons.  I can see, however, that these might actually (don’t shoot me for saying so) be a better TV show than they are books.  I’ll look into it when I get ambitious enough to requisition the first couple of seasons from Netflix or something. 

 

I also started on the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, thanks to my mother’s recommendation.  I am enjoying them thoroughly, even if the age of the main character is far-fetched.  They are fun little mysteries narrated by a precocious eleven-year-old in a small town in 1950 England. 

 

For Christmas, I received two books from a good friend, and I have devoured them (yes, in the past week).  The first was a Robert Ludlum book, The Road to Gandolfo.  I had never read Ludlum before, but this certainly inspires me to check out some of his other novels.  Of course, like most of the world, I have seen The Bourne Identity, but I have a feeling the book will be better.  He also sent me an economic history of the Great Depression called The Forgotten Man.  I can’t say enough good stuff about this book.  Do you enjoy history?  This is very well-written and a page-turner, which cannot be said of most non-fiction books, in my opinion.  Maybe I’m just difficult to please.

 

My most recent loan from the library was A Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison.  I was skeptical at first, despite the good reviews, because a goodly portion of the book is in the present tense.  I usually hate that.  In fact, just a few weeks ago, I put down a book after only a few pages because it was not only written in the present tense, but the second person singular.  Gah!  It hurt my head to read it.  But A Silent Wife was different.  The present tense was juxtaposed with flashbacks, which were written, of course, in the past tense.  It was similar to Gone Girl, in that the story was about the disintegration of a marriage and told from the perspective of both the husband and the wife, but that’s where the similarities end.  It was not a psychological thriller, and I knew whom I wanted to win well before the end of the book. 

 

Speaking of Gillian Flynn, I read Dark Places, and that was enough for me.  I don’t need that kind of horror in my life.  I am looking forward to the Gone Girl movie, however.

 

The other thing I do to distract myself is watch TV after the kids go to bed.  Normally, Tony and I watch a show or two on Netflix a few times a week, or less often even, depending on how much homework he has or how into my book I am.  But right now, I need all the distraction I can get.  It’s no fun to spend an entire evening watching your kids have fun and your husband do all the work while you sit quietly, trying not to vomit.  So after the kids are asleep, but before we go to bed, we watch TV.  But here’s the rub: we finished the last available seasons of the shows we watch.  We need a new show (or two).  Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.  What are your favorite shows on Netflix streaming?  We have watched and finished all available episodes of (over the past eight years, lest you think all this watching happened in the past two months) 30 Rock, Bones, Psych, Scrubs, White Collar, Greek, The Office, and The League.  We started watching Raising Hope last night and Tony was interested in Eureka.  What say you?