Last month I wrote a Slice of Life about reading, how I had been neglecting it, and I asked for recommendations for my next read. I got some great suggestions, most of which I had not read yet. I went to my public library online, and checked out Goldfinch first, which Fran Haley had suggested.
I loved this sad and suspenseful book that had characters I will never forget. It was really difficult to put the book down, and I would read in bed for too long each evening, until my eyes glazed over or I fell asleep. However, I’m a slow reader, and this book was 750ish pages, so I had to renew it. Then yesterday I had to have a cataract removed from my eye, and I still had about 3 hours left to finish the book. When I got home, while my eye was still patched, I finished reading it. One eye closed under the patch, and the font size enlarged for my other lone eye.
Today I checked out my next book, this one on audio so I can rest my eyes the next few days and do more listening. Thanks to Lakshmi’s idea of listening to classics on audio, I checked out Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
I wrote a sevenling poem about Goldfinch; the sevenling form I learned about last month from Tammi Belko. She sometimes has her students write sevenlings after they finish reading a novel, so I did that today too. You can read more about the sevenling form here at her post at Ethical ELA.
Goldfinch
Theo Decker loved his mother and then Pippa,
he experienced hell, and he and Boris tried to escape
this life by flying too close to the sun.
He didn’t want to forget his mother,
to have stolen the painting, and
then to have disappointed Hobie.
He was too young for all the catastrophe.
I’m not usually a great patient, so I probably read and wrote too much today. I will go add some drops to my eye and rest it now.