Three

I am reading three books right now.

Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and a little Nora Roberts romance that I use to go to sleep at night. Of course all this reading means I am not writing. I can’t really read someone else’s work and write my own. It just doesn’t work for me.

Normally I would not be reading the first two books at the same time, but circumstances made it impossible to keep my curiosity at bay. The first one is a birthday gift from a friend and I picked it up just to peruse a few pages, then had to go on. The second was loaned to me by someone who knows I love Brown’s books.

It came with a bookmark containing a favorite quote from the book, written in long hand, a tradition for the one who gave it to me. “Don’t tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh.” I love descriptions like this.

But, I have to admit that when I read Brown’s books I also feel very close to my father who was the only other person I’ve ever known who could tell a tale with all the attending scientific data wrapped around religious and mythological themes and make it into something that seemed modern and possibly true. You need an incredible amount of knowledge to do that.

Dad had degrees in physics, chemistry, and English. He was born to be a student and he was born with an imagination! He could read and write in four languages, or so he said. I can’t read in four languages, so I just had to take him at his word. I learned early on never to ask him anything I didn’t really want to know because he would research it down to the nth degree and present a dissertation on it, whether I liked it, or not.

So, I’m reading one book to put me to sleep, one that I find fascinating and one that makes me feel like I’m cuddled up next to my Dad being read a grown-up fairy tale and I don’t want to finish any of them too soon.