Books

I am in the middle of a bunch of books. Would you like to hear about them?

First there is Phineas Redux. Do you remember what a trial I found the first half of Phineas Finn? All is forgiven. I have grown genuinely fond of our hero and I am enjoying this return to his world. Also this book has fewer Parliament scenes and cabinet meetings and the like, which featured prominently in Phineas Finn and always made me want to turn to reading some nice refreshing phone book pages. 

I am also trucking along through Sketches by Boz with the Hardcore Dickens Club. I can imagine that it would have been easy to get distracted without the steadying influence of the HDC folks, so I'm glad we're reading it together. It's interesting to see how many of the things that caught Dickens' eye at 20-something continued to rattle around in his brain for the rest of his career. It makes me wonder: how much are our middle-aged selves like our younger selves, generally?

My morning book is Interior Freedom by Fr. Jacques Philippe, and it is fantastic. Our pastor loves Fr. Philippe and has encouraged the parish to read his books for years. They've never really done it for me, until now. This one is exactly what I need to be reading. I am underlining and marginalia-fying and taking pictures of especially stirring bits to send off via text.

I am also still plugging along in Thinner This Year, but I do not love it. Too moralizing, too fat-shame-y, too willfully oblivious to the charms of butter, which is a GIFT of the LORD. I am going to finish it before it is due back to the library, because the nutrition science is presented at a level and in a way that works for me and because I want more details about implementing the exercise plan described in Younger Next Year for Women. But I am going to finish it a little grudgingly.

In between I am reading No Cure for Being Human, which I purchased in the fall because someone on Twitter told me to, and then left languishing on my Kindle until my friend Becky mentioned that she was reading it. It's really good. I might be enjoying it more if I weren't reading too many other books at the same time though.

In a decision that might seem a little strange for a person who already thought she was reading too many books, when the Kindle app suggested that I might like to read Miss Cecily's Recipes for Exceptional Ladies I said to myself, "Everything I am reading right now is so heavy; maybe a nice fluffy novel would be fun." It feels like I am interspersing bites of metaphorical Cool Whip with bites of metaphorical kale salad. I do not know if I will finish it; a tub of Cool Whip is a lot of Cool Whip. We shall see.