Aimee – Lemuria Books

Author: Aimee (Page 1 of 2)

Get carried along ‘The River’ by Peter Heller

On March 5, 2019

If you read one book by an author and love it, then you love that book. If you read another book by the same author and also love it, then chances are you now love that author. This is what happened to me with Peter Heller. I read Celine when it came out and it became one of my favorite books of all time. When I found out Heller was coming out with a new book, I knew I was going to have to read it and I was not disappointed.

The River is basically my worst nightmare that comes alive in its pages. I hate camping–I mean it–I really, really hate it. I took a road trip with a group of friends to the Grand Canyon and they wanted to spend at least one night camping. I reluctantly agreed and, for some reason, they put me in charge of finding a campground. So, of course I found one that had a pool, a coffee bar, and reasonable showers and toilets. It stands to reason that the goings on in The River are my absolute worst nightmares.

Two college students, Jack and Wynn, decide to furlough school for a semester and take a canoe trip of indefinite length on the Maskwa River in Canada. They have dreams of picking blueberries and fishing during the day and sleeping under the stars at night for as long as they wish. This dream is threatened when they catch a whiff of a forest fire that is rapidly heading their way. The nightmare is made worse when they hear a couple arguing loudly and only the man from the couple shows up paddling down the river the next day. The action in this book left me white-knuckled and sitting on the edge of my seat.

Peter Heller is a master at putting his readers right into the situation at hand. When I think back on reading The River, I don’t so much remember the pages I was looking at, but rather I have memories of being on the river shore listening to Jack and Wynn making decisions about what they need to do to stay a step ahead of survival. I can smell the wildfire as I feel the wind blow through my hair. I feel nervous when Jack and Wynn are worried and I feel anxious for them even when they’ve put together a plan of action they feel good about. It’s hard to know how I would react in the situations they have been put in; I probably would have had a meltdown of some sort. So, I am strangely comforted by reading about people who are confident in scenarios in which I wouldn’t have a clue what to do.

Anything that can go wrong does go wrong for Jack and Wynn. Their friendship is strained when they disagree over what could potentially be life threatening situations. It just goes to show that Peter Heller’s talent is unmatched for my taste, in that he can not only make me read about a situation where I would normally stop after reading the back of the book, but also love the same book.

Peter Heller will be at Lemuria on Friday, March 8, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss The River.

Aimee Reads the Classics: Final Resolution Update

By Aimee

On December 12, 2018

In Classics, Reading

If you remember (if you do, I commend you on your tremendous memory), all the way back in January, I made a New Year’s resolution to read a classic novel a month. Spoiler alert! It didn’t happen. There were a few months when I started to read a particular book, but just couldn’t get into it, and then didn’t pick another one to replace it.

I did, however, read 9 classics out of the proposed 12, which is 9 more than I would have read without a resolution! There were two months that could be considered cheating so I’ll let you, dear reader, decide if I can include them on my list or not.

January – We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. This book is decidedly more modern than the normal classics we think of, but it is a classic nonetheless. I had been wanting to read a Shirley Jackson novel for a while so I picked this one up and I enjoyed it–just in time for the movie to come out!
February –Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I am a big fan of Jane Austen, so it was high time that I finally read Northanger Abbey. I loved this one as much as I thought I would.
March – The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I really loved this book. This was my first Tolkien novel, and I don’t think I could have picked a better one to start with. Bilbo’s riddle battle with Gollum is one of my favorite scenes of literature ever; I found myself trying to figure the riddles out alongside them.
April – The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. This was the surprise hit for me. Of course, this is widely considered a great novel, but I picked it up thinking it was going to be kind of boring. I am ashamed I ever thought that! I was totally engrossed and finished it in one sitting.
May – This is the month I didn’t finish Middlemarch by George Eliot. “Didn’t finish” is a generous statement, because I barely got 10 pages in before I decided that I definitely wasn’t in the right frame of mind to read it.
June – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I didn’t really like this novel. I appreciated Wilde’s usual wit but I didn’t love how it was all put together. Still, I’m glad I can say that I’ve read this.
July – I skipped a classic in July. In fact, looking back at the list of books I read this year, I barely read anything in July. Summer just does something to me where I don’t want to do anything except bemoan how hot and humid it is outside.
August – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was such a fun book! I thought this was a great summer read. My favorite character was Ben Gunn who asked for cheese after being marooned on the island for three years.
September – Another month I didn’t read a classic. In all fairness, I had just started my first semester of grad school, so I felt guilty if I wasn’t doing anything but homework.
October – The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. This is one of the ones that might be cheating, as it is a short story. I listened to this one as an audiobook, and it was the perfect story to listen to right before Halloween.
November – Persuasion by Jane Austen. This is the other one that could be considered cheating since I have read this one before. This is my favorite Austen novel and I was in the mood to read it again. Captain Wentworth is so much more swoon-worthy than Mr. Darcy, in my opinion!
December – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. What better book to read for the holidays than this one? I really enjoyed this; growing up, I always thought Dickens was boring. I guess this means I’m an adult now because I saw the humor in it and I found myself looking up the symbolism of the different ghosts.

I have to say, I really liked this challenge. I stuck to this resolution better than I would have with a saving money- or an eating healthier- resolution. With 2019 rapidly approaching, I am starting to make a list of books I want to read next year; I know I want to read a more diverse list of authors. If you’re looking for an easy resolution, this is a great one! It doesn’t even have to be one classic a month. It could be any kind of book. It could just be “In 2019, I want to read at least one book a month.” Like me, it’s okay to skip a month (or even cheat a little). You succeed if you read!

A Birthday is Announced! Come Join Us for Agatha Christie’s Birthday on Saturday

By Aimee

On September 12, 2018

In Events, Mystery

“By the pricking of my thumb”, Agatha Christie’s birthday this way comes! If you have read any of my blogs, you know that I can’t go one paragraph without mentioning the Queen of Mystery. Well, this time I’m justified since I am going to give my recommendations for my favorite Christie novels.

Happy Birthday, Agatha Christie!

September 15th will be her 128th birthday, so on that day, don’t have a “destination unknown“; come to Lemuria where we will be celebrating with $1 beer! An “endless night” wouldn’t be enough time for me to express how much I love reading Christie’s books, but I will keep this short and simple. Now to lay all my “cards on the table“, here are “the big four” Agatha Christie novels you should read.

The A.B.C. Murders is a mystery in which Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot gets a letter describing a crime that is about to be committed. The interesting thing about these crimes is that the victims are murdered in alphabetical order. The first victim is named Alice Ascher, then Betty Barnard, et cetera, et cetera. There are red herrings all over the place, which Christie is famous for. Poirot bandies together the victims’ relations to gather more information, and I enjoyed how they worked together.

The Murder of Roger Ackyroyd is the first mystery novel I read where the plot twist truly took me by surprise. A man is murdered in his study with a house full of suspects. Fake alibis are thrown around, innocent people act suspiciously, and Hercule Poirot is in fine form. As in most Christie novels, there is a wide cast of characters and all of them are interviewed by Poirot, whose line of questioning usually doesn’t make sense at first. The climactic ending will have you on the edge of your seat!

After the Funeral of Richard Abernathie, his relatives come together in their childhood home. The man’s eccentric sister makes a passing remark that he may have been murdered, and then the day after the funeral, she is found dead. Of course, this solidifies her statement that her brother was murdered. Every member of the family has a motive for killing Abernathie, as he was a very wealthy man. The family’s lawyer does most of the grunt work, and Poirot takes a back seat in this one.

A Murder is Announced in the local newspaper of an English village, with directions to meet at a certain time and date at the house of Little Paddocks. The owner of the house takes it in stride and offers finger foods when her curious neighbors stop by to see what happens. And something does happen! Mistaken identities, fuzzy memories, and questionable motives abound in this story. Miss Marple, an amateur old lady sleuth, is the main detective in this one.

“And then there were none“! I hope you’ve enjoyed this list, and that you weren’t thinking “death comes as the end” of this. This is an “unfinished portrait” of all the possible Agatha Christie novels I could possibly recommend; in fact everything here written in quotes is a great title you should read! Now I’ll finish this up and draw the “curtain” on this blog.

Picking Their Brains: ‘Unthinkable’ by Helen Thomson

By Aimee

On August 2, 2018

In Psychology, Science

“Does my world look like yours?” Helen Thomson asks this in Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World’s Strangest Brains. I really surprised myself when I picked this book up. The two psychology classes I took in high school were interesting, but that was the last time I thought about the brain. But when I looked at Unthinkable when we got them in, the cover just grabbed ahold of my attention. Each chapter focuses on a real person from around the world and the rare brain disorder they have. The chapter that made me buy this book is about a man named Graham who, for three years, believed he was dead. Objectively, he knew he wasn’t. He was able to walk and talk and tell the doctor he was “dead,” but for some reason, his brain wasn’t letting him grasp that he was alive.

A lot of the people featured in this book have a disorder known as synesthesia. Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which the activation of one sense will also trigger a second sense. In the book, Ruben is a man that associates colors with people in an almost aura-like sense. Different colors mean different things to him, for example, he associates red with things he likes. A famous synesthete was Vladimir Nabokov who had grapheme-color synesthesia, where he saw specific letters in specific colors. In his own words, “The long a of the English alphabet….has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. I am puzzled by my French on which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass… In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h.”

The most interesting chapter to me was about Sharon, who would get completely lost in her own house. Since the age of 5, Sharon’s world would completely flip around to where she couldn’t figure out where she was. She soon realized this was happening whenever she spun around quickly or took a curvy road to her destination. At a party, when she was young, though, she figured out that the trick to right everything around her was to spin around again. Sharon calls this her Wonder Woman impression. For a long time, she was ashamed of this condition. At age 5, her mother told her not to tell anybody about this, or “they’ll say you’re a witch and burn you.” For 25 years, she hid this disorder from everyone, even her husband! Finally, in the 2000s, a scientist by the name of Giuseppe Iaria helped her come to terms with her condition.

This book is full of other interesting people, from Bob who remembers every day of his life, to Matar who truly believes he turns into a tiger at night. Thomson does an excellent job of frankly describing these people. The tone of this book could easily be sterile, but there’s a lot of warmth when she speaks of these people, as if they were her friends. In each chapter, Thomson also mentions similar cases, past and present, which I found interesting. As I read Unthinkable, it felt like a friend was telling me all of this over coffee. Even if you only have a passing interest in psychology, you will love this book!

Life Will Pass Me By If I Don’t Open Up My Eyes: Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’

By Aimee

On July 19, 2018

In Fiction

The nameless narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is selfish. Like, really selfish. She also makes sure to remind the reader every so often of how pretty and thin she is. But I can’t help but like her. Go figure. It’s the year 2000, and the narrator has decided to put her life on hold and hibernate for a year. She goes to the yellow pages and accidentally finds the worst psychiatrist in New York City. Faking insomnia to get sleeping pills, her psychiatrist throws every pill possibly related to this condition at her. This suits her just fine as she thinks up new cocktails of pharmaceuticals to take to make her sleep more and dream less.

I’ll be honest and say that hibernating for a year sounds extremely appealing. Who wouldn’t want to sleep around the clock? We see the reader only when she’s awake every couple of days. We follow her to the bodega around the corner where she gets two large coffees that she guzzles on the way back to her apartment where she watches Whoopi Goldberg movies until she falls back asleep. We attend the psychiatrist appointments, seeing just how frenzied and choppy Dr. Tuttle is. The narrator’s best friend Reva visits her at least once a week, and we see how much Reva irritates her. She says, “I loved Reva, but I didn’t like her anymore.”

One of the pills the narrator gets is one called Infermiterol. The upside of it is that it makes her sleep deeply; the downside is that she starts having blackout episodes where she goes shopping, makes spa appointments, and makes calls to people she’d really rather not talk to. She has no memory of these episodes, only seeing the aftermath of things having been moved around when she wakes up. On one such blackout, she wakes up on a train, wearing a white fur coat she doesn’t remember buying, headed to Reva’s mother’s funeral.

It’s hard to put my finger on what I liked about this book so much. The narrator is a borderline sociopath who has a toxic relationship with everyone in her life. She has an awful older on-again-off-again again boyfriend who keeps dumping her for women his age. Her relationship with her parents when they were alive was not ideal. In spite of all of this, there’s just something relatable about wanting to cocoon yourself in your bedroom and hopefully wake up when all your problems are solved.

Aimee’s Fantastic Feminist Graphic Novels

By Aimee

On July 5, 2018

In Graphic Novels

I have recently gotten into graphic novels. It’s kind of an intimidating hobby to get into; there are just so many to pick from that it’s hard to know where to begin. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject but if it’s an expert you want, come to Lemuria and talk to Hunter; he’s our resident comic book guru. However, I can recommend a few graphic novels to get your feet wet.

My first graphic novel was the Lumberjanes, written by Noelle Stevenson and Shannon Watters. This is a fun series centered around a camp for girls, specifically the girls of the Roanoke Cabin. Throughout the series, the girls are trying to earn badges for various camp activities, including the “Robyn Hood” badge or the “Friendship to the Craft” badge. Supernatural things keep getting in the way of earning these badges, though. Like when the goddess Artemis decides to moonlight as a camper named Diane and causes all sorts of trouble. Or when a freak snow storm happens, and the Roanoke’s cabin leader is kidnapped by a monster-hunting former Lumberjane. Expletives come in the form of famous feminists (“Holy Anne Bancroft!”). All of the main characters are extremely likable and it’s like being a ride-along with every new adventure they encounter. This is a series that has several issues out, so there’s plenty of material to delve into.

In a similar vein to the Lumberjanes is Misfit City by Kiwi Smith. This two volume series explores the idea of what it would be like to grow up in a city where a Goonies-type movie was filmed. Hooligans are always driving through town blasting the soundtrack, and trashing the local museum dedicated to the movie. A group of teenage girls are so over everything that has to do with “The Gloomies“, which is a movie featuring kids that search for lost treasure. That is, until the girls find a real treasure map and go on their own Gloomies treasure hunt. I was super bummed when I finished the second volume and found out that that was the end of it. I love The Goonies and I was immediately drawn into this story. The characters are diverse, each girl a different shape and skin color. If you want a good adventure, this is a great one for you!

Glister by Andi Wtson is an adorable graphic novel that’s probably meant for a younger age than me, but I so enjoyed it that I have to recommend it. Glister is a young girl described as a “magnet for the unusual” that lives with her father in a house that is seemingly alive. Rooms are prone to changing and at one point, the house just up and leaves. This graphic novel is five different stories in one volume and each story has its own color ink. In the first story, a teapot is haunted by the ghost of a verbose writer whose book never seems to be finished. In another, Glister is so desperate for a family, that she unintentionally grows her ancestors from a tree. The artwork in this comic is sweet and I would recommend it for anyone between the ages of 10 and 100!

Don’t let the 12 year old main characters in Paper Girls (by Brian K. Vaughan of Saga fame) fool you; this one is definitely for a more mature audience. It’s the 1980s, and paper girls are a new concept. Four 12 year old girls are out on their daily route the morning after Halloween and they are sticking together to protect themselves from teenage boys still out on the prowl. Their morning is disrupted when they are attacked by costumed people that take one of their walkie talkies. In trying to find the perpetrators, they discover a strange machine they accidentally activate. Subsequently, people start disappearing, and they struggle to navigate the aftermath. If you’re a fan of Stranger Things, then Paper Girls will appeal to you. The girls have foul mouths and they stick together fiercely. I’ve only read the first volume, but I can’t wait to get my hands on more of this series.

Can you see a theme in the graphic novels I like? I love a good story that empowers women, and all four of these fit the bill. I’ve barely made a scratch into the comic book world, so if you have any recommendations for me, feel free to stop by the store and tell me!

Aimee’s Sizzling Summer Reads

By Aimee

On June 14, 2018

In Fiction, Humor, Mystery, Science Fiction, Short Stories

Remember when I had that reading slump in February? Well, I’m having the opposite of that now. Nothing motivates me to stay indoors and read like the sticky heat of the South. In the month of May, I read 7 books, 4 of which I read while I was at the beach for a week. This is my roundabout way of telling you what to read this summer!

I’m not a huge fan of short stories but when I heard that Lauren Groff was coming out with a new book of them, I knew I had to read it. I finished Florida in one sitting; it was that good. Groff does a fantastic job of evoking the feeling of Florida; you know, the feeling when you’ve been standing out in 100% humidity for several hours and your clothes are clinging to you because they’re soaked through with sweat. “Dogs Go Wolf” tells the story of two young sisters who are abandoned on an island and go a bit feral in their fight for survival. A boy from the swamps of Florida is surrounded by snakes and loneliness in “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners”. A woman brings her two boys to the hometown of her favorite French author only to find that France isn’t as romantic as she remembers from her youth in “Yport”.

While digging my toes in the sand, I read two page turning mysteries. A tarot reader in dire need of money is told that she has inherited a small fortune in Ruth Ware’s latest thriller, The Death of Mrs. Westaway. Harriet “Hal” Westaway is a struggling fortune teller who has some dangerous money lenders on her back. When she is trying to figure out what to do, she gets a letter saying that her grandmother, also named Westaway, has died and left her an inheritance. Hal, who is desperate for relief, decides that there is no harm in assuming the role of long lost granddaughter and heads to the Westaway estate to claim what is wrongfully hers. This was my first Ruth Ware book and now I’m kicking myself for not reading her other books already. I love a good English mystery, so this book was right up my alley. There is a twist at the end that I truly did not see coming; as I was reading, I felt very smug about thinking I had figured it out, only to be taken by surprise.

The Word is Murder features the author, Anthony Horowitz, as a character in his own book. Horowitz is the Watson to a grumpy, almost unlikable detective named Hawthorne. Hawthorne approaches Horowitz to write a book about his detective work. In order to do this, Horowitz follows Hawthorne around on a case involving a woman who plans her funeral on the same day she is murdered. The conflict arises when Horowitz’s dislike for Hawthorne bubbles up now and then; the detective tends to have a one track mind when it comes to cases, forcing the author to put his life on hold. I had fun reading this one. Horowitz is great at planting clues and dropping hints so that the reader can try to figure out whodunit before the end of the book. I’m a dunce, so I didn’t figure it out until it was written down on the page in front of me. If you were a fan of Magpie Murders, Horowitz’s previous book, then you will enjoy this one, too.

The only book I read in May that isn’t new, was The Martian by Andy Weir. I do not claim to be smart when it comes to science; in fact, the only test I’ve ever failed was in my high school chemistry class. There is a lot of science talk in The Martian, and I do mean a lot. But! It was all explained in a way that made me want to get a degree in rocket science. Mark Watney is an astronaut that was sent with a small team to live on Mars for about six weeks. The mission is quickly aborted only a few days in, though, when a storm blows in. Watney is injured and presumed dead, and is therefore left behind when the team leaves. He was the team botanist/engineer, so he has to use every bit of his knowledge in order to survive. I loved this book, and it took me by surprise just how much I loved it. Watney is hilarious, and stays positive throughout his entire fight for survival. I found myself laughing out loud, dismayed when something went wrong, and cheering when something went right.

I will lastly mention David Sedaris’ new book Calypso. Sedaris is in fine form with this one, and it reminded me a lot of my favorite of his books, Me Talk Pretty One Day. The overall theme I gathered from this book of essays is Sedaris’ own mortality. In “Stepping Out,” Sedaris is obsessed with his Fitbit and is continuously trying to outdo his last record of steps. He becomes a fixture around his neighborhood, taking long walks and picking up trash as he ambles. He and his partner buy a vacation beach house in North Carolina that they name the Sea Section. Several of the stories are based out of this beach house where he vacations with his siblings and their families. Sedaris has a tumor that he gets removed in a back alley operation, that he wants to feed to a snapping turtle that also has a tumor in the titular essay “Calypso”. (It’s a lot funnier than it sounds, trust me.) Calypso reminded me that David Sedaris is one of my favorite authors with a particular brand of humor that few people can get away with.

Summer reading is fun again, now that I can actually pick the books I want to read. Stop by Lemuria on your way to your vacation to pick up your summer books!

The Search for the Golden State Killer: Michelle McNamara’s ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’

By Aimee

On April 25, 2018

In True Crime

When I was a kid, which really wasn’t that long ago, I had a morbid curiosity for all things murder and mystery related. It was something I didn’t share with classmates because even as a 9 year old, I knew this would alienate me. However, a fascination with true crime and cold cases has become a little more mainstream these days thanks to shows like Making a Murderer, The Jinx, and The Keeper, and with podcasts like The Last Podcast on the Left and My Favorite Murder (all of which I would recommend). ill be gone in the dark When I found out that Michelle McNamara of the blog True Crime Diary had a book coming out, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. And y’all, once I had it, I couldn’t put it down.

With what could be called an almost fanatical obsession, McNamara was on the hunt for what she dubbed the Golden State Killer, or GSK. Originally known as the East Area Rapist, the Golden State Killer raped over 50 women and killed more than 10 men and women in the Sacramento, Santa Barbara, and Orange County areas. Entire communities were paralyzed with fear, always wondering in the backs of their minds: “Who’s next?” McNamara interviewed witnesses, detectives who worked on the cases, and even the victims themselves to try and get information that she felt the original police reports lacked. She would buy items on eBay that she thought could possibly be linked to the killer. McNamara visited sites where the GSK hit and was on a first name basis with a criminalist who was also working the case on an official level.

This isn’t a spoiler when I say that this guy was never caught. It was only in the mid-1990s with advances in forensic technology that investigators even connected various cases to the GSK. McNamara was obsessed, going so far as to look up options for submitting the killer’s DNA to Ancestry.com. The GSK haunted her, almost tauntingly so. Unfortunately, Michelle McNamara passed away unexpectedly in 2016 before she could finish her book and before she could find out who the GSK really is. The book was finished with the help of her researcher Paul Haynes and investigative journalist Billy Jensen who had to make sense of thousands of McNamara’s files.

When I said that I couldn’t put this book down, I meant it. I read I’ll Be Gone in the Dark in one day and practically one sitting. McNamara’s style of writing kept me questioning if I was actually reading a work of fiction. “Surely something like this would never happen,” I would think until a chilling fact would surface as a reminder that this monster was only all too real. This (entirely true) story pulled me in and held on for dear life until the very final pages. There were twists that are expected in works of fiction, but are made all the more bone chilling because they did, in fact, happen. Lovers of true crime have to pick up I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Michelle McNamara has written what I imagine will be what future true crime books will be compared to.

Aimee Reads the Classics, Part 2

By Aimee

On April 19, 2018

In Classics, Reading

In January, I wrote a blog that has affectionately been tagged Aimee Reads the Classics, laying out my plans to read a classic novel a month this year. Well, I’m here to update you and say that so far, so good! I have managed to finish my classics within my time constraints, and in the case of this month, finish early and start on next month’s pick. I’ve actually been really enjoying the books I’ve read. My guess is that since there are no teachers breathing down my neck ready to ask the significance of so-and-so’s eye color, I have felt more relaxed about reading.

northanger abbey In January, I started with We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I wanted to ease myself into reading classics, so I chose one that was put out more recently so the language wouldn’t trip me up. While I enjoyed reading it, I felt like it was a bit predictable. But I liked how it ended, and I still think it was the perfect way to kick off 2018. I read Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen in February. I knew I was going to like it because I already love Jane Austen. I had only seen movie versions but surprisingly, I had never read the book. It’s surprising because I consider Catherine Morland to be the Austen heroine that I’m most similar to. While I love Austen’s works, I did get a little bored. If you read my reading rut blog post, you know that I had a couple of weeks in February where I wanted to do anything but read.

So far, though, my favorite classic I’ve read is my March pick: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I hadn’t seen the movies yet, so everything was brand new to me when I read it. I loved all the scrapes the dwarves got into that Bilbo Baggins had to get them out of. Tolkien’s straightforward way of writing made it easy to just want to sit down and read. The Hobbit is one of those books that reminds you of why you love to read.

I have already finished my April pick. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is probably going to end up being my easiest read this year–not because it’s an easy book, but because it only took about an hour to read start to finish. Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book surprised me because I was initially a bit bored with it, but about halfway through something clicked and I suddenly couldn’t wait to find out the fate of the old man and his fish. Since I finished it so quickly in April, I decided to go ahead and start my May classic since I have a feeling it’s going to take me a little longer to read. I’m only about ten pages into Middlemarch by George Eliot, but I already know I’m going to have to start over because I didn’t pay any attention to what I was reading.

So far, I’ve been enjoying this ride into the classics. I’ve already impressed myself by sticking to my monthly deadlines, something I’ve never been able to do (That’s the 4 in me; it’s an enneagram thing). I’ll come back in a few months with another update!

Reaching Out of a Reading Slump

By Aimee

On March 28, 2018

In Reading

Reading Slump /ˈrēdiNG/sləmp/ (noun) – not being able to pick up a book and read because you just can’t, you just can’t read right now.

For the last half of February this year, I was in a book rut. Yes, even your friendly neighborhood booksellers get reading slumps! It’s a very frustrating place to be when my job is to be able to recommend books to the lovely customers that come into Lemuria. I’d like to offer some advice on 1) how to recognize when you’re in a slump of your own, and 2) how to snap out of it and get back to reading.

How did I recognize that I was in a book slump? Well, for one, I noticed that I was going days at a time without picking up a book. Binge watching Queer Eye was a lot more interesting than finishing my February classic (see my blog from January about my journey into loving the classics). ren reading Laying in bed and eating potato chips was more enthralling than reading my book club book. I finally realized that what was putting me in a slump was the obligation of reading. I didn’t want to read what I was supposed to be reading, and the thought of reading anything else left me feeling guilty about not picking up my book club books. So, what did I do? I didn’t read anything. At least a week passed by where I didn’t pick up a book except to move it out of the way to place my coffee down. I was itching to read, but I still had my classic novel in the back of my head making me sweat bullets.

How did I get out of my book slump? First, I decided that the awesome women in my book club weren’t going to run me out of town if I didn’t read our February pick. So, I let that one go. Then I lifted my rigid classics deadline. So what if I don’t finish Northanger Abbey by the end of February? Once I took these harsh restrictions off of myself, I felt like a load had been taken off my shoulder. Next, I decided to stick my toes back into reading. I had a cozy mystery on my shelf that I hadn’t read yet, so I decided that was perfect book to get my eyes and brain adjusted back to reading. Boy, was it! I was sucked into this mystery, not wanting to put it down. I forgot all about my laptop and Netflix and Candy Crush. When I finished that one, I was ready to finish Northanger Abbey. And you know what? I finished it before the end of February. Now I’m fully aboard the Reading Express out of Slumptown with three books grabbing my attention. I’m currently reading an Agatha Christie whodunnit, American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, which is my March classic pick. I know this sounds like a lot, but once I remembered that I actually like to read, I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on. Sometimes, it takes laying on the couch and letting Hulu play six Law & Order: SVU episodes in a row to make you come to the realization that you’re in a rut.

Are you in a reading slump? The booksellers at Lemuria would love to help you out of it!

Author: Aimee (Page 1 of 2)

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Aimee Reads the Classics: Final Resolution Update

A Birthday is Announced! Come Join Us for Agatha Christie’s Birthday on Saturday

Picking Their Brains: ‘Unthinkable’ by Helen Thomson

Life Will Pass Me By If I Don’t Open Up My Eyes: Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’

Aimee’s Fantastic Feminist Graphic Novels

Aimee’s Sizzling Summer Reads

The Search for the Golden State Killer: Michelle McNamara’s ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’

Aimee Reads the Classics, Part 2

Reaching Out of a Reading Slump

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