Joe’s Book Club: Chapter 77, A Bit of An Update

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life” – W. Somerset Maugham

There is a classic image of a person who is ill or recuperating from an illness and they’re sitting up in bed reading  a novel. That was certainly my own case back in the 1970’s when I was in St Agnes hospital for a long stay while being diagnosed and treated for Cancer. During my hospital stay, Bob and Al, two of my friends from work, brought me a stack of six paperback books. Most were in the mystery genre they knew I liked but there was also a sports book—Dan Jenkins’ Semi Tough—a genre I seldom, even now read but I devoured it and really enjoyed it and can recommend the book—not so sure about the movie, though—to anyone who even has the slightest interest in professional football. Fast forward to my most recent hospitalization, three weeks ago…

I was only in the hospital for less than four days and, never once while I was there did I think, “I wish I had a book to read.” My mind, it seemed was focused in other directions. Upon discharge, as Mary was driving me home, I started thinking, maybe I can finally finish Rex Stout’s Triple Jeopardy that I had started before entering the hospital’s Ortho/Trauma Unit.

If you’re not familiar with Stout’s books, those whose titles have a number or numerical designation indicates that it consists of a collection of novellas, in this case three of them. Before going to the hospital, I had read the first novella and had just started the second—The Cop Killer—when something happened that slowed my reading progress to a crawl and in some cases moved it backward.  The side effect of one of the drugs I was taking made me drowsy, so after reading just a page or two I would put the book down. When I came back to the book later, I would pick up the story from where I left off but felt I needed to read more of where I left off and then bang zoom, I would get drowsy again and put the book down, sometimes not making any progress and sometimes going backwards! This went on for several days until I discontinued that particular drug for a side effect that “shall not be named.”

Two At a Time?

Right now, I’m doing something I haven’t done in a long time: I’m reading two books at a time. There was a time, long ago, when I would read two books at the same time. One would be a non-fiction book and was invariably about photography. The other would usually be a genre novel, sci-fi or mystery. But now… In addition to reading Rex Stout’s Triple Jeopardy, I am also reading Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, the 1846 translation by William Barrow. I picked up this 560-page paperback from Amazon for less than five bucks! I approached the book with some trepidation because of my recent unhappiness with a book that had been translated from German. Within less than a page I was delighted to find that this translation is filled with the kind of archaic language that just makes you feel you’re out there swashbuckling with the Musketeers. This is a long book that I am really going to enjoy reading.

What’s Next

I purchased a paperback of Triple Jeopardy on eBay along with a hardback copy of David Housewright’s Dearly Departed. What was not disclosed to me by the vendor was that it was a former library book, which I don’t keep in my collection, so I won’t be buying any more books from this seller. I usually don’t leave negative feedback. Instead, I leave no feedback. Leaving negative feedback on eBay invariably results in a pissing contest between buyer and seller and I don’t have time for that kind of crap in my life. So I’ll read; then recycle this book.

Dearly Departed is one of Housewright’s early (and few) Holland Taylor mysteries which I far prefer to his McKenzie stories, although I do enjoy them as well. Well… after a  long hiatus, Housewright decided to bring Taylor back with a new book called Girl in a Dumpster, but it costs $35 for a hardback and there is no paperback version—only a Kindle version. So I won’t be ordering it. What I will be ordering and have pre-ordered is Nicholas Myer’s Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing, which should be shipping to me around August 26, depending on the phase of the moon. (You never know what Amazon will actually ship stuff to you these days.)

I wish I had more to say but I’m still struggling to read Triple Jeopardy…at least now I’m on the third story and it’s about a monkey!

Postscript: The featured image of me reading at Starbucks is an older image. As I write this I am mostly home bound but expect to start Physical Therapy real soon to (hopefully) put me back on the path to full recovery.