A Clean Well-Lighted Place to Read

Where do you normally read? In bed? A favorite chair? Listen to audio when commuting?

by Paul D. Marks

Well, since I basically commute from the bedroom or kitchen to my home office, a distance of about thirty or forty feet, I don’t do much reading on my commute. But if I did – and if I had a self-driving car – I’d be reading a hardcopy book or one on a Kindle app. I find that if I try to listen to an audio book my mind drifts too much. I don’t know why.

These days I do most of my reading at home, because I’m home most of the time – you see, there’s a logic to it. There’s various spots I like, nothing out of the ordinary like sitting in a tree or while hang-gliding. There’s three or four places that I do most of my reading: in bed, a chair in the bedroom that faces out to the view, on the family room couch, a particular chair in the living room and outside on the patio. I don’t take many baths but when I do I like reading in the tub, but I’m very careful not to get anything wet…except me. Most of my books look unread and if I got one wet – or too wet – I’d freak out. Not really, but almost. I guess I’m pretty nitpicky about that, but I like to keep them pristine. So much so that sometimes we buy Amy, the wife, a separate book of the same thing so mine doesn’t get messed up. She’s not as particular as I am. And when we had a pool I liked reading outside on the deck or on a pool lounger. I wish I could say I read at the beach these days, but alas I don’t get there as much as I used to. We do live just outside the national forest and sometimes I think about going up there and reading but it’s pretty nice here and if I don’t have to go anywhere, I pretty much don’t.

Here's one of my favorite reading spots with the ubiquitous slip covers because of the dog hair everywhere. I forgot what the upholstery looked like until I took the cover off the ottoman.

When we travel I like to read on planes, as long as there’s no loud or obnoxious flyers, so that does limit plane-reading sometimes. And if we had a boat, ah, but I can dream, can’t I?

Like others have mentioned, I have stacks of TBR books all over the place and a virtual stack on the Kindle app. I have some audio books around that I listen to now and then, but as I said, I tend to lose focus. Amy reads on audio a lot, as she commutes to work on the train. However her brain is wired vs. the way mine is allows her to concentrate on audio books and her mind doesn’t seem to wander. She really enjoys her audio books and I’m envious because I would like to “read” them. It just doesn’t work out.

Buster was enjoying the July/August, 2019, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which includes my story Past is Prologue. Then he just zonked out using my leg as a pillow. Hope it wasn’t my story that put him to sleep.

And like Frank, I often have at least one non-fiction (though sometimes more) and one fiction book going. I usually don’t read more than one fiction book at a time, but I might be reading short stories while I have a novel going.

Here's the view at sunset from another of my reading spots.

How about you? Where do you like to enjoy a book? And now excuse me, I gotta go hit the hang glider and get some reading done.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

Don't forget to check out Broken Windows, the sequel to my Shamus award-winning novel, White Heat. Betty Webb at Mystery Scene magazine says: "Broken Windows is extraordinary."

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