Let’s take a moment, breathe in, breathe out, and stop to appreciate the beauty of actual, real-life printed books. 

I’ve always thought John Steinbeck books were meant to be read in the summertime.  There needs to be sunshine and green grass and the prospect of a warm wind kicking up through the leaves.

I haven’t posted about a book in five months.  You might conclude from that fact that I haven’t read a book in five months, but of course that would be a silly turns of events.  Since knocking out “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry,” I returned to the Red Rising series, first re-reading the original trilogy and then the newest book, “Iron Gold.”

I’m early for everything.  I love reading. I once had a job at a mall where I would walk past a book store on the way to my store.  Combine these things and it’s not hard to imagine that I spent a lot of time killing a few extra minutes browsing shelves and adding to my library.

When warm weather hits, I always feel drawn toward the Steinbeck portion of my bookshelf.  There’s something about his writing that really lends itself to sitting on the patio and having bright sunshine on the pages.

I enjoyed about half of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise.”  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first half, or the second half, or the middle half, but rather pieces here and there that added up to half.

Erik Larson’s “Thunderstruck” is one of the more enjoyable reads I’ve had in a while.  It blends chronicling Guglielmo Marconi’s development of wireless telegraphy with a real London murder, and the eventual role Marconi’s technology plays in catching the killer.

About four months passed between the last time I contemplated quitting on a book and when I read Sam Neumann’s “Memoirs of a Gas Station.”

I may be a month late posting about reading Margaret Lee Shetterly’s “Hidden Figures,” but the movie version will probably win some kind of Oscar this weekend, so that’s close enough to timely, right?

Most of the John Steinbeck books I own are from the same Penguin Classics series, and one thing I like about them (other than the pleasing symmetry of their cover designs) is that they have an introduction by an academic putting the novel into its historical context.