Reading...a lot!

June was a very busy month for me, unfortunately however, not in my writing life. I rarely had more than a half an hour to myself, not enough time to get any creation done. As a result, I edited a few pieces, dabbled a little here and there...and read. Easier to spend time waiting in line reading a book than writing one.

I picked up the second in Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris' Adept series (Lodge of the Lynx) at a library booksale (don't ya just love getting an entire armload of books for under five dollars?!). I already had volume one and several other unconnected Adept books, so I picked it up. But it's been such a while since I read the first, I re-read that one, then finished the second fairly quickly. I read Dagger Magic early in the week and finished it at the cabin this Wednesday past (sidenote: interesting that Amazon calls this #4 in the series. The actual novel only calls it "A Novel of the Adept" with no indication of a timeline).

Katherine Kurtz is one of my all-time favorite authors. Her Deryni series is partly what got me into writing my own stories. She's got a great attention to detail and certainly can do ceremony!

In cleaning out the English department office at school, I came across My Time in Heaven by Richard Sigmund. I mistook it for Dr. Eben Alexander's story. Sigmund's story was a quick read and an interesting view of what he saw when he died. I liked his comment in the preface: "Everyone who has an experience like this is going to see it differently." Sigmund is a Christian pastor and many of the symbols and images he saw were couched in that tradition -- because it's what he'd understand. He's very clear that what he tells is what he saw -- not what you or I would see because our approaches/philosophies would be different. We would have symbols we could understand. A cool read, even if they weren't my symbols.

Next up came Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale. Wow. Just wow. Very few fiction books surprise me any more, but this one sure did. I read it in a day only because I couldn't put it down. I was glued. No spoilers but I'll tell you its a Regency romance unlike any other. Really, really good and I recommend it highly.

And then I read Wonder by R.J. Palacio. It's a young adult novel and didn't take but an afternoon but it made me cry. Twice! I am very grateful a teaching colleague gave it to me to read. It's a great companion piece with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (one of my top five favorite books of all time).

By then my transition was done and I was back in writing mode. Wrote 3500+ words on my Christmas story and finished off a chapter. And all this from Wednesday night to Friday afternoon! Gotta love being alone at the cabin. :)

Play safe!
Diana