By Lee Mack
I almost chose to start a book to ensure I didn’t finish it and then need to start a new book partway through the reading time. But since I’m notoriously bad at either not finishing things or taking way too long to finish them I chose instead to use the time to finish reading Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred. I’d been reading it sporadically for probably 3 weeks. It was great to have the excuse to read the rest (slightly more than two thirds) in one sitting. It gave me a level of immersion I didn’t realize I’d been missing. I remembered what was happening while only reading in short increments after all. But the characters felt so much more real giving them the time for deep full breaths instead of gasps between other activities. Their actions built more fluidly and the experience was that much more enjoyable. Butler’s books do hit pretty hard so it was a challenge to pick something else up instead of lingering over the ending of the book. It did take most of the time to finish though so I opted for some of Nikki Giovanni’s poems. I think the mindset I was in definitely fed into some extra oomph behind the words. Overall the experience has me thinking of some other areas of life that might benefit from me setting aside larger chunks of time for them.
Title: Kindred, Quilting the Black-eyed Pea
Hours read: 4