Well, there is a time and a season for all things, and this is my time NOT to write. There is just too much going on, and I can’t wrap my head around creativity.

In fact, last night I was pondering my own story - which is a long journey involving health (physical and mental) and spirituality - and while I realized this was a good basis for a fictional book, my own internal dictation involved no actual PLOT. So it needs work, and maybe this is a mull-it-over scenario for now.

BUT I have been reading, a lot. Last night, I reached a point in my current novel documented atrocities and I realized that most of the novels I’ve read in the past year have included this. Perhaps it’s because I prefer historical drama, and this sort of thing makes the best historical dramas, but here’s a list of what I’ve read, with a star beside the fictional books that included genocide, torture, or such events:

The Historian*
Bee Season: A Novel
The Witch of Cologne*
The Birth of Venus: A Novel*
Water for Elephants: A Novel
A Thread of Grace*
The Bastard of Istanbul*
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)

Feels like I read more, wonder what I’m forgetting? I got to thinking about this a lot, since I am NOT a person who can stomach or in any way see the logic in purposefully inflicting pain on others. In fact, my tolerance for pain is so low, and my imagination is high so reading this stuff is torture for me. Now, outside of thinking myself a masochist, I wondered why it so happens that half (or more?) of my reading list looks likes this.

I do like seeing characters put into impossible odds. And to be fair, I didn’t foresee such circumstances in each book (Bastard of Istanbul, for example). But, then again, perhaps it’s just the eternal, “what would I do?” that captivates all of us as fiction readers.

My husband looked at my Amazon wishlist and pooh-poohed it. It’s full of - wait for it -

BOOKS!

Dear God, what was I thinking???

This cracks me up. I remember going to buy a book for one of my nieces and being told “are you crazy” by my sister. Apparently other people don’t think books are the amazing, awesome, wonderful fun thing I thought they were.

Now I had my share of Barbie’s and dolls and crafts and my share of not getting that electronic thing my cousins got because they were boys as a kid - so don’t get me wrong - but let me tell you, when I saw that shape and size that could ONLY be a new book, my heart would pound. Was it a new Nancy Drew? Or maybe “Wrinkle in Time”? Or something different?

To this day, I LOVE gift certificates for bookshops. This summer, I took a long and boring (REALLY boring) survey at Adobe.com because they were giving away $25 Amazon gift certificates.

My kids are little, but seem to like books so far. I hope it stays with them and that reading is fun for them, not a chore. I love the excitement of a whole brand new world opening up - especially if it’s an exceptional quality fantasy book (rare to find, Ursula K. LeGuin and JK Rowling notwithstanding).

To be frank, all that reading made me a bit smarter than my fellow schoolmates I think. It IS good for your brain. So if your kids love to read, embrace it. It’ll make life easier for them. I mean they need to read a ton in high school and 10 times more in college, and some really dry stuff too. Read to them, read with them, let them read comic books (which I love) and cereal boxes, and don’t laugh.