I get ‘obsessed’ with something and all the other stuff starts to collect. I’ve learned over the years that my obsessions have a time limit, so if I want to take advantage, I have to go full steam ahead before the steam runs out.

But I know what you mean about saturation points. I used to read a lot of computer books, project management books, etc. But I’ve really been moving away from the ‘technical’ of late and more to the ‘creative’. It’s like when you try to feed your kid cooked green beans and they say they’re full, but they’ll have a slice of pie. “My green-bean place is full”…

Doug

Often, I find out about a book because a close friend recommends it after a heartfelt conversation. That is how I read “The Secret Life of Bees,” which I adored at the time and still adore. I find that books arrive in my life just when I need them most, carrying a message that I need to hear.

Two years ago I left my full-time job as a computer guru and started devoting my energy to writing and performing my work. Before I left my job, I reached a point where I felt very stuck, and was unable to decide whether to leave or stay or what in the heck I should do. In the privacy of the women’s bathroom, I threw up my hands and asked whatever powers be for help, because I knew I couldn’t make such a weighty decision entirely on my own. Then I dried my tears and went back to my desk.

Waiting in my email inbox was a message about a workshop being given by a woman named Kathy Cordova. I scrolled through the email feeling bored and depressed, completely uninterested in the workshop. When I got to the end of the email, there it was: the book I had been waiting for! Ms. Cordova had written a book entitled: “Let Go, Let Miracles Happen (The Art of Spiritual Surrender).” I went right on Amazon and ordered it. Sure enough, when it arrived, it proved to be exactly what I needed.

Apologies for the overlong post, but the subject is a juicy one for me. Thanks, Lily!

~Love and Blessings,
Selene~

AB

Thanks for the fashion plug. I blush. I must remember to groom a little before slipping out to the bakery for our Sunday Broetchen.

Hi Helen, I think I might not be right about contemporary fiction. There’s so much of it, and I hate being disappointed by it, but then again, as David points out, it’s important to read and support our peers, so maybe this is a category I should rethink. But I do like having other people’s recommendations. And I just got up to find that poem, but discovered that the whole collected S. Heaney has been put somewhere, and I have no idea where that is!

Diana, That’s a good way to look at this winnowing of what we want to read. It’s probably not a bad idea to have a little space to be surprised by something, but then it’s also nice to be able to decide we don’t have to read the big book when we want the small, or the other way around. Reading for pleasure should, after all, be just that.

Hi Sulz, I think this is a subject that’s on many minds. Maybe it’s because it’s fall, when book reading feels like “required” reading!

What a nice friend you have Emily. It’s lovely when people share things like the TLS. I do enjoy the NYT book review, although I am getting much better at making up my own mind about what books sound like they might be good.

Dorothy, I’ve ordered District and Circle and when I finish it, I’ll try to write something about it.

I read The Secret Life of Bees when it first came out. I remember thinking it was quite OK but now I can’t remember a blind word of what it was about. Yet I have read so many books that haven’t been trumped up to high heaven and the stories will stay with me forever. Voyageurs by Margaret Elphinstone is one example.

These days, instead of buying cookery books and magazines, I get them from the library, copy out the recipes I like, then return them. I’m sure the authors wouldn’t thank me but it means I don’t get the guilt of buying a cookery tome and using only one recipe out of it.

My husband has caught me browsing blogs when I should be writing. Better go! Heh!