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Reading Slothfully
I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.
Currently reading
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
The Spirit of the Border
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Delilah of the Snows
Mrs. Miniver
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
A Christmas Carol
The Way Some People Die
Envy of Angels
Quin
The only reason I ever picked this book to read is because it was by the author of one of my spouse's favorite books ever, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. I liked Mrs. Wiggs ok, so I figured I'd check out more by Ms. Rice. Quin was my second selection.I think of Mrs. Wiggs as being a book for children, but Quin was not. It was your basic adult novel. Quin, or Quinby Graham is a young man who was a war hero (WWI), who was gassed. He grew up in a rural area, Maine, actually, and finds himself mustered out in Kentucky, where this book takes place. Quin is highly capable, but unpolished and uneducated. By accident he meets and falls in love with a lovely, well off, young woman and makes it his purpose to refine himself so that he can win her. He eventually succeeds in that, while also rearranging the lives of the hapless people around him, notably the autocratic grandmother of Quin's love interest, her two maiden aunts and her sot of an uncle. Quin has a way of convincing people to overcome their prejudices and act in what ultimately turns out to be their own best interests.
The story is well written and keeps one's interest. Some of it might seem exceedingly romantic to modern readers, but it's a story of its time. Personally, I thought the other young woman in the book, Rose, seemed like a better catch than Quin's love interest, Eleanor, but what do I know about romance?
