Read any good books lately?

I love to read.

Often, I will read one of my books as I get into bed. At times, with a good book, I can read several chapters. But at other times, I have a tendency to just fall asleep quickly. If I’m pretty tired, that’s good except for when the next night comes, I can’t remember anything I read. Then I have to review the previous chapter and go over all the characters in the book once more.

As I’ve gotten older, however, I find it harder to keep the characters straight. The last book I read had over twenty characters in the first couple chapters. I’ve found that I had to write all the names down on a piece of paper to try to keep them straight. Using this page as my bookmark can work out quite well. I even jokingly suggested to my lovely bride that when someone writes a book, they should put a list of all the characters in the beginning. The ones that are super important should have an asterisk, so you know to keep track of them.

A book I read about a month ago was really good. It came down to the climactic scene and it was discovered that Bill had done something totally out of character. I read the line and said to myself, “Who the heck is Bill?” Apparently he was in the book and I had not written his name down to keep track of him. Pretty frustrating to say the least. I spent a week reading this book and had no idea what happened at the end. But, once more, I’ve digressed.

The latest book with dozens of characters was about a car accident in Maine that changes the lives of two different families. As I read, surprisingly I had a good track on the twenty people in the book. However, as I moved ahead to the next chapter, the author introduced another fifteen plus characters that I now had to keep straight. This was all the people in the other family that soon would be affected by the car crash. I started to think that I was going to need a bigger sheet of paper.

I read a lot of books.

Do others struggle with this issue? I’ve read a lot since I was little. My mother used to take me to the library after we got groceries on Friday night and let me pick out all the books I wanted. It was on the next block over from McKinley’s, our local grocery store. Back when I was a kid, however, all I read were sports books. Mostly about my beloved New York Mets and my favorite player Tom Seaver. Hey, it worked. She got me reading.

When our kids were little, I would take them to the library also and let them pick out whatever book they wanted. The librarians at our local library are used to me. I kind of feel like Norm from Cheers when I come in as many of the librarians know my name from all the books I check out.

Placing books on hold, especially when they are best sellers, allows me a good variety to choose from. Friends will tell me books that they think I might like and I keep track of them. I like to check out the list of best books of the year. As such, I usually have a large stack of books on my nightstand. That’s why when I run into a book like the above book, I’m not afraid to drop it and move on to another one. Life is too short to read crappy books.

Several of my neighbor friends like to read and we bounce ideas off each other often. I like that. It’s a good community of readers and we enjoy sharing our best books with each other.

I’m happy to share some of my best books of the year with you off-line if you wish. Everybody’s taste in books is different. I tend to read more books with offbeat characters and humorous books now because of the crazy world that we live in. It’s necessary. I enjoy it. It can be a good escape.

So if you don’t read, go pick up a book and find a nice comfortable chair. Reading is a good way to get away to another place even when you can’t go on vacation.