"Booking Through Thursday"

"It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again? "

(Moon Rani's reply) On occasion I have found myself in this situation, unlikely as it seems. When I was younger, I took it as a sign of paucity of books, and I would buy or check out more as soon as I could. But now I take it as a sign that my mind is digesting my most recently-read book, and I allow myself time for that. It's a little like leaving a superb meal and thinking, Oh dear - - that was so good that I must eat again right now! But what the situation really calls for, in my case, is a long walk or drive or just solitude and something that works my hands while my mind roams. It might take a day or it might take a month, but I see no time limit to savoring books.
When I was in my teens, I had an endless, aching hunger for reading. I read shampoo bottles and toothpaste tubes. I read recipes on name-brand foods and directions on vacuum cleaners. I read instruction manuals on things for which I was unsure of the uses they had. My voraciousness was indiscriminate, as you can plainly see, and nothing was beneath my craving to read. This is how I discovered that the best way to care for an imported blouse was to "wash in snow flakes and dry with hands." Of course I knew it meant to wash in soap, not detergent, and preferably Ivory Snow flakes, and to let it drip dry, but what a wonderful mental
image it gave me of dashing about in snow flurries, catching as many flakes as I could to wash my blouse, then waving it gently until it was dry.
Oh, dear - - as usual, I've taken the scenic route to get somewhere, and this time I've taken you with me. Suffice to say that I now see seasons in my reading, and I try to appreciate them as they come.