Nows and Forevers

Back late December, as I looked at how I wanted 2023 to go, I decided I would track the books I read and try to go through a book a week. I made a few other new year’s resolutions. This is really the only one, other than a few writing goals, that I’ve so far met.
I passed the 52-book mark in early September. I like to read. And it’s also good for me, not just my soul but also for my professional skills. Reading helps me write.
I reached 55 books earlier this week, when I finished Dani Shapiro’s “Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life.” (I liked this book, and I will write about it sometime.) But it had been the first book I had finished since September. I was traveling the first week of October on a book-research trip. I had two really big deadlines at work, and I’ve disappeared into research on my new book over the last few weeks.
Over the past few years, I have been listening to Welsh-language programming while I’m in the car, driving to and from work. But I’ve really tailed that off. I haven’t resumed my NPR habit, which was a pandemic casualty. For the past several months, feeling homesick, I’ve been listening to WCBS Newsradio 88 out of New York City. But the invasion of Israel and the tragic headlines since have really taken the wind out of my sails.
I’m taking a bit of a break from podcasts. So I picked up an audiobook: Erik Larson’s “The Devil in the White City,” his account of the 1893 World’s Exhibition in Chicago and the serial killer who arose in and around the fair. I’ve always admired Larson as a writer, and been a fan since “In the Garden of Beasts,” which fair to say stunned me with its sweep and its story. I’ve read most of his other work since then, although I hadn’t gotten around to “The Devil in the White City.”
Now I have. It’s going to be book No. 56, as I’m already through about half of it, and I’ll be going back and forth to work four or five days next week.