Book

As the saying goes,  When you get laid up, you might as well make lemonade of it. Or something like that.

So I got laid up and had to spend three plus days in bed. Though Werner disagrees with me, my considered opinion is that only those who have not been confined to a bed for days at a time can possibly think that that  is a pleasant way to spend your time.

How do I spend days in bed without going crazy or driving those around me crazy?  I read.  Books.  Several of them.

I had started Flaubert's Parrot earlier, sidetracked by Christmas and holiday events and placing the book too far from my reach.

But now there was ample time to finish it.  What a treat! If you ever read Madame Bovary and wondered why in the world it got so much attention, this will enlighten you, all wrapped up in fiction and fantasy.  If my professors had presented literary analysis the way Julian Barnes does, I'd have been entranced.  Of course I assumed it was newly published.  Silly me - it came out in 1985!  Here's the NYTimes review - glowing.

Finished that one!  Do a little needlework but that's not enough to pass the time.  Ursel to the rescue!  First a little gem of a book, a quick read, a playful and imaginative story of the Queen and books. Yes, that  Queen.You just have to read it - it won't take an afternoon and it will make you feel good and make you want to expand your reading list.  Mine has grown by at least 10.

  

And finally, time for one more.

It's literary again, with a fictional overlay.  When I read "I was sitting in my plastic chair on the sandy drive"  I of course assumed my protagonist was in Florida.  No.  Maine!  It's a different sort of beach bum on a different sort of beach but with the same ol' beach bum blues.  Fun, with more than a dash of poetry.

Now I'm out of bed and up and around on my own two feet. Next time I read three books in three days, I hope it is on a beach in a plastic chair.  NOT in a bed.