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Quiet Reading or Quiet Quitting
It’s the last weekend of August! I was going to write about Quiet Quitting and how I wish I had done that two decades ago but I won’t. I wish I had, but I didn’t. That was then and I suppose I’m not really a passive-aggressive person. The End.
No, today I really feel like I should write about books—reading books, library books, bookstores and books I have loved. This morning, while enjoying my first coffee on the porch, I was almost overwhelmed with the feeling of “I need more books”. To be sure, our home is full of books. Books on shelves in every room, books on tables in every room, books on counters in the kitchen, books on nightstands, books on chairs, books stacked beside couches and books in the boomboom room. Today I have a huge urge to buy more books. I long to spend some quality time in a bookshop. I can’t exactly put my finger on the point in my life when books became such a big deal, but I’m sure it started when I was a little kid. My Mother was a reader. She read for herself and she read to us every day. She instilled the love of reading in me and my siblings. When we were youngsters, Mom and Dad were regulars of the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. On market day, we often went to a book shop that specialized (if that’s the correct term) in the swap and sale of used books. If I remember correctly, and sometimes I don’t, we had one cardboard box that was used for our book purchases. We were allowed to fill that box with any kind of book we wanted: comic books were not tolerated. I’m sure we also traded our “old books” as a downpayment on our market day purchases. I don’t remember where the bookshop was, but it definitely had the heavenly smell of books! At one time my favourites were the British “school annuals”, Trixie Belden, adventure stories, archaeology and atlases. Mom was a big fan, and subscriber, of Readers’ Digest Condensed Novels. When there were fewer children in our household, Mom may have had time for uncondensed reading, but as the family grew, quiet time for reading became “condensed”. Readers’ Digest made it possible for Mom to get her reading fix in the few moments she had to herself during a normal day. I learned to love Condensed Novels and could whip through four or more “novels” each day. By the time I was old enough to find novels on my required reading list in school, I had already spent “condensed” quality time with the subtle nuances of character development. When I was in Grade Ten, I wasn’t blindsided by the dusty, dreary Cry the Beloved Country, I’d already read the “condensed book” when I was eleven or twelve. Even though I wasn’t really sure I understood what apartheid meant, our English Literature teacher understood and spent time explaining what we were reading. When To Kill a Mockingbird was slapped on our desks, in Grade Ten, I’d already done that tour of duty. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t always sure I understood everything I read during my long relationship with RDC books. As a matter of fact, the deeper meaning of To Kill a Mockingbird literally flew over my head as a teenager. I dreaded the ubiquitous, “What do you think the author was trying to say?”. It wasn’t until I was working for an American corporation in the sixties I finally “got” what racial discrimination meant. And, it wasn’t until a decade ago I bought the umpteenth edition of To Kill a Mockingbird at a teeny, usedbook shop, re-read it and I finally felt the punch of Harper Lee’s subtle brilliance.
As the evenings become cooler, the wasps become more annoying and the birdsong takes on a sense of urgency, I feel a bookshop calling my name. Maybe my brain is telling me to stockpile for the winter months and the annual migration from the coffee and books on the side porch to coffee and books in the living room.
I might buy a book about “quiet quitting”.
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