book crush thursday: for the love.

Unsurprisingly, a side effect to blasting my way to the end of my draft this week? My brain is a little bit dry. (Meaning: only the dumbest movie lines are running through my head. I stare off into space. A four-year-old could whip me in Scrabble. That kind of dry.)

Which means that if I tried to talk up a favorite book, I'd probably let both book and you down. I might even drool on the keyboard a little, as I squint at the screen and then forget what I was thinking about.

You don't want that. I don't want that. The beloved novel in question doesn't want that.

So I'll save it for next week. Meanwhile, what will I do to recover?

Read, of course. Bellyflop into fiction for the evening, with my feet up, with some tea.

And for goodness' sake, why don't you do the same?

In fact, yes, let's make that an order. You absolutely deserve this sort of pampering. Cozy up to a little fiction tonight. Isn't that a good, sane thing to do, when it's getting colder and you might have an afghan in reach? Find the novel you've been saving, or unbury a childhood favorite.

Whatever impression this blog presents, I don't read as much as I used to. Chagrin!! But truly, I used to read all the time. All the time.

I'd try to read while getting dressed. I'd stick a book under my chin and pin it open so that I could read while I was making the bed, or putting butter on toast. The all-purpose hands-free reader, that was me. Multitasking before I knew that was the name for it.

(I also would have mismatched socks, rumpled sheets, and sometimes I'd miss the toast and put the butter on the counter. Whatever. It was worth the cost.)

Maybe you can do the same tonight--with or without the under-chin method. Have yourself a merry little fiction festival. Get word-drunk.

Or binge on poetry. I, for one, never read poetry reasonably. I'll go for weeks without thinking about it, then read a whole volume in a day or two. It goes right to my head, literary Champagne, but it's such a lovely rush.

So there it is. I'll be in the writers' recovery room tonight, digging into My Brother Michael, by Mary Stewart. (I'm soooo excited!!) Wrapped in a creamy flannel blanket, sipping some mint tea. I think that will do. It will do nicely.