Beating the don’t-want-to-read ‘tude
My interest in reading lately has taken a backseat to other activities, such as watching TV, video games and assembling jigsaw puzzles.
But, slowly, I’ve been tackling my To Be Read pile.
I spent about a week on “A Time to Kill,” John Grisham’s first novel. The conflict begins when two white men rape a young black girl. Authorities catch the men but, after their bail hearing, the girl’s father shoots them dead in the courthouse. Soon, the southern town becomes the setting of a high-tension trial about whether the father was justified in killing his daughter’s rapists.
A week of no reading later, I decided it was time to select my next read and settled on “A Painted House,” also by John Grisham.
A 7-year-old boy is the narrator for “A Painted House,” which takes place in 1952 on an Arkansas cotton farm. Tension builds after the boy’s family hires 10 Mexicans and a family of Arkansas migrant workers.
It’s amazing how quickly my “don’t feel like reading” mood goes away once I become engaged in a story.
