Long Run wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:32 am
That is a thoughtful gift, but one that comes with responsibility. We have a number of stewardship type gifts as well, and I have a friend who has a veritable museum of precious and semi-precious items. You get to a certain age and you start thinking about a succession plan for such gifts, along with everything else.
On the topic of revisiting books previously read, shouldn't reading at some point be enjoyable rather than a slog? That is, shouldn't it be books that we really liked reading that we read again? (I know, my American Novel 1-3 professors are opening my permanent record and marking me down a grade).
I recently made the decision that I will no longer read anything that doesn’t truly please me - I used to feel obligated to ‘finish what I started,’ but now if I’m not feeling a book after a chapter or two, it goes in the donate or return pile (depending whether it’s mine or a loan from the library). There isn’t a lot of time left and I want to use it wisely.
I lost about a decade of constant readership due to neurological issues from my chronic illness. I used to read 2-3 books a week and in the last decade it has been more like 2-3 books a year. I could weep just thinking of all the time lost. Anyway now my brain is restored somewhat to normal settings and I am reading again, have spent the last few days engrossed in a 1000 page Stephen King novel a client’s family member lent me this past weekend. It’s SO good!
I am working on my piles of unread books that made the cut when I last moved across country, and I have a small collection of beloved favorites that I will read again. But as the time grows short I feel like reading things again must take a backseat to reading things I’ve never got round to yet. Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, which may or may not make the cut after one or two chapters.
PS, about the legacy gifts - today I spent some time oiling my great grandmother's Bristol Clock Co. American Cuckoo clock, a family heirloom I have long cherished since as a very small child I used to sit on her floor and wait for the cuckoo to emerge on the hour. My grandmother gifted it to me when she died and it has been one of my most cherished possessions since. I realized as I was caring for it today that there is nobody left on this earth who gives a shit about that clock besides me. I could chalk that up to the price of not having children, but then I remember when my dear friend Linda passed away after I cared for her on hospice and I then watched as her two sons and their wives came into her home and in a day’s time dismantled 4 decades of her life, tossing her treasures into trash piles and Goodwill piles and basically not giving a shit about any of it except a few pieces of furniture they wanted for their homes. My uncle did the same thing with all my grandmother's things when she died, but luckily I got in ahead of him and took a few items that were very meaningful to me before he disposed of everything without sentiment.
We are all stardust.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan