Louise Penny x Three; Or, Send me Suggestions of What to Read (When grossly overtired)

Folks. I decided I wasn’t distracted enough from reading by the Burning of the World and so I went and had a(nother) baby. And *now* I remember a new kind of distraction. The sort where earnest efforts for ‘an hour of concentrated deep reading’ are laughable, and the most comfortable way to read is holding a phone (because one hand) that is constantly dinging and vibrating to let me know that someone out there wants to get in touch, or that another catastrophe is upon us. And you’ll recall I’d already decided to let this be a summer of reading I can or want to read, rather than any ideas of what I should read.

And so I read three Louise Penny novels back-to-back A Better Man, The Nature of the Beast and The Long Way Home and I have to say that reading three in sequence is Not a Good Idea as this reader realized that there are only so many times a protagonist can be described as having ‘kind eyes’ before you lose patience, and only so many brie and pear sandwiches before you begin to wonder about cholesterol levels. Maybe it was a problem of reading the books out of sequence, but I also had a hard time keeping track of why some of the secondary characters were doing what they were doing (why was Clara mourning her husband? did he die? or leave her? or both?). Not that we’re ever meant to have a strong connection with these secondary characters, they are all parodies of themselves, and all hopelessly generous and thoughtful in an entirely out-of-time-and-place way.

Which is not to say I didn’t have a good time reading the books. I did. Just with diminishing returns and rapidly declining interest (which may or may not have correlation with increased time spent awake in the middle of the night and a choice between reading and showering or eating – which, let’s be clear, you can read and eat at the same time, so why would any one bother with showering?).

All this to say I think I’ll be taking a break from Louise Penny for the foreseeable future. I just got A Little Life back out from the library, and maybe re-reading that will prove focusing. Or I’ll be back here in a week telling you about the magazine I read. Whatever else I need to stop refreshing my news apps and checking Twitter because I promise there’s nothing comforting or enjoyably distracting about that at any time of day. Or, of course, you can send me your recommendations for what to read when you are grossly overtired and despair for the world. And are addicted to news apps and podcasts and should really, really, just. stop.