Reading: Where do you like to read? A hammock, a couch, an overstuffed chair? At a desk, on a bench, or while walking somewhere? The chair in the photo above would suit me well for firmness and lighting.
I feel I can’t read in half of my house without falling asleep, and while it would be easy to blame my age now, I don’t think that has been the reason for my fatigue or maybe mental laziness before now. I am a poor, distracted, uncompelled reader for the most part. No one will learn of my literary habits in the coming years and find in them a pattern to follow.
Historic Novels: Some books are not comfort reads. Gina Dalfonzo says she had trouble sleeping after reading The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. It’s a novel about Lucrezia de’ Medici, the wife of Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who died at age 16, and is remembered mainly as the subject of Robert Browning’s, “My Last Duchess.”
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Saith the Duke with every indication that he suspected his Duchess of infidelity or perhaps, more vaguely, unworthiness.
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Jotting Notes: Patrick Kurp has a few small notes in his Bible of 60 years. They don’t reveal much.
What is she holding? The woman in this 1860s painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller has all the appearances of holding a smartphone.
Nobel Prize: French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash
Have you had your eyes checked recently? Sometimes fatigue when you read can be a signal you need a new glasses prescription.
That’s a good conclusion, and I do need new glasses, but my fatigue has lasted longer than that would account for.