This evening I finish Richard Russo’s new book Bridge of Sighs which was equally as spectacular as his Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls. I’d started the book earlier in the week and discovered it was a novel I couldn’t skim in any way. Each sentence had such significance to the whole of the book and his writing style was to constantly reveal snippets about the inter-twined lives of the main characters, either by going forward or backward but rarely standing still in time.
I read this morning while on the stepmill at the gym and after I got home I decided that if it was summertime, I’d get in the pool and float around and read – but since that’s not possible, the next best thing was to get in my easy chair in a pool of sunshine and read away the afternoon. And that, my friends, is exactly what I did! I felt so totally decadent – so pampered and indulged to luxuriate in just reading. I took time out to fix dinner – if that’s what you call heating up the remaining leftovers from Christmas dinner – and then returned to my cozy retreat in the den.
When I turned the final page, it was a bittersweet ending – I wanted to know the outcome but I also hated giving up the characters I had come to know and love in a few short days. Fortunately my nightstand holds my next treasure – Loving Frank by Nancy Horan – the fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s affair with the wife of one of his clients for whom he designed one of the Oak Park homes in the early 1900’s. I’m off to bed to read until I fall asleep!
