A Reader's Dilemma
What to read when the daily news is more story than you can handle
I wonder if I’m the only one who has not been able to read through a whole book for months now. Especially not a novel, where the protagonist faces dispiriting problems. Dear Reader, can you survive her pain until the happy ending in Chapter 23?
Maybe it’s because my days are busy with local Democratic Party work, but I’m in the habit now of only reading a few pages (or paragraphs), before sleep at night. I feel no need to add fictional turmoil to the day’s real news.
But I miss the lovely feeling of taking out the bookmark and coming home to a good story. Here are some bookmarks from our travels.
But what to read?
Short essays seemed a good bridge to a novel, so I picked up Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s A Gift from the Sea. I quickly realized how much Lindbergh was struggling in this book, rationalizing her difficult marriage. I felt sad for her, wanting to look her in the eye and say, “Make your escape forever, Anne, not just for a few days at the beach with your sister!” But I listened to her. I don’t know everything.
Shorter pieces seem more comfortable these days. I’m trying to clean out (I did finish reading the book Clutter Busting) and in doing so, I found a few folders full of articles about women artists and writers and other things that I saved years ago when I had no time to read (but managed to read lots of novels anyway).
I’ve been looking through these articles in the morning with my tea or coffee. My goal is to put one or more of them into the recycling bag on the porch every day.
This morning I was reading about Colette, long one of my favorite writers. I turned the large (10.5” wide x 13.5”high), stapled page from McCall’s April, 1966, and was distracted by a column, “Ways To Be More Beautiful”. It was written by “Mrs. M. Reynolds, Beauty Skin-Care Consultant”.
Mrs. Reynolds is talking to me about Day-Long Loveliness, Smooth Lips (like a fresh rose petal) and Pretty Elbows (pink and clean looking). It turns out Olay cream is mentioned in every paragraph and I see “[Advertisement]” in small print at the top. This Cream for Beauty will “fully reveal the soft, dewy bloom of a superb complexion and fulfill your dreams of greater beauty.”
I feel like an archaeologist digging at the site of my youth. I totally missed out on this in 1966! I was already in my twenties, a college graduate about to get married and have a family, but somehow I had failed to “pat Olay vitalizing night cream round my eyes with feathery, fingertip movements.” Mrs. Reynolds, (I thought), now it’s too late.
But across the page Colette was saying, “The sudden desire to look beautiful made her straighten her back. 'Beautiful! For whom? Why for myself, of course.'”
Dear Reader, Colette won my heart.
And, dear readers, I agree with Colette, too.
You are not alone. Other than reading "The Promise" by Damon Gulgut (the Booker Prize) the only books I've read are non-fiction that our DEI Book group reads. Our most recent book was "The 1619 Project" and now we are reading "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States". Both of these titles were difficult must reads. Mostly I read the news and other articles on line.