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On Goodreads, it says I started reading Love in the Time of Cholera on June 5--which is when I committed to reading it (it's my book group's next book)--but in fact I didn't start it until this past Monday, the 9th. As it happens, I started reading it in a church chapel, the day after Pentecost. As it happens, the story opens on Pentecost--an interesting coincidence.
I was having a hard time getting into it--I read maybe fifteen pages that day.
Today I sat down to read a little more.
I sat down behind a card table in my driveway, because it's the weekend of the neighborhood tag sale, and I thought I'd try to get rid of some things (I didn't; the only things we sold were things we didn't have on offer), including some Chinese floral paintings I inherited from a friend when I helped her clear out a storage unit. One of these was displayed on the card table, held in place by two fist-sized rocks.
And so I read more about eighty-one-year-old Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who hated most animals but loved his parrot, whom he taught to speak French, as well as the Latin accompaniment to the Mass, among other things. He was trying to get this parrot down from a mango tree--he had climbed up a ladder and managed to grab the parrot--but then the ladder slipped out from under him, and JUST as I read these words . . .
(But he released him immediately because the ladder slipped from under his feet and for an instant he was suspended in the air and then he realized that he had died without Communion, without time to repent of anything or to say goodbye to anyone, at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday.)
. . . there was a gust of wind and a loud DING noise, and one of the rocks that had been holding the painting down landed on the recto page I was open to, wrinkling it back and tearing it just a little. The DING turned out to be where it hit my coffee mug on its descent.
Evidence:
Pretty dramatic commemoration of a character death!
. . . It's still rather heavy going, reading-wise, though I have liked a couple of things. I'm glad I have some other things to read as well, that are a little less demanding.
I was having a hard time getting into it--I read maybe fifteen pages that day.
Today I sat down to read a little more.
I sat down behind a card table in my driveway, because it's the weekend of the neighborhood tag sale, and I thought I'd try to get rid of some things (I didn't; the only things we sold were things we didn't have on offer), including some Chinese floral paintings I inherited from a friend when I helped her clear out a storage unit. One of these was displayed on the card table, held in place by two fist-sized rocks.
And so I read more about eighty-one-year-old Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who hated most animals but loved his parrot, whom he taught to speak French, as well as the Latin accompaniment to the Mass, among other things. He was trying to get this parrot down from a mango tree--he had climbed up a ladder and managed to grab the parrot--but then the ladder slipped out from under him, and JUST as I read these words . . .
(But he released him immediately because the ladder slipped from under his feet and for an instant he was suspended in the air and then he realized that he had died without Communion, without time to repent of anything or to say goodbye to anyone, at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday.)
. . . there was a gust of wind and a loud DING noise, and one of the rocks that had been holding the painting down landed on the recto page I was open to, wrinkling it back and tearing it just a little. The DING turned out to be where it hit my coffee mug on its descent.
Evidence:
Pretty dramatic commemoration of a character death!
. . . It's still rather heavy going, reading-wise, though I have liked a couple of things. I'm glad I have some other things to read as well, that are a little less demanding.
