Reading While Healing

In my regular life, I don't make enough time to read unless I'm on vacation. What, how can you not read, you might ask. Oh sure, I read, in between commuting, working, exercising, cooking, and spending a little time with my dearly beloved. I read the daily Boston Globe, the weekly Ipswich Chronicle, and the New Yorker, especially when I get to the gym and prop it up on the elliptical strider.

Books? I'm lucky if I finish one novel per week.

Now that I'm home full time with a back healing from major surgery, severe warnings that I'm not to lift, bend, or twist, and energy only for slow strolls up and down my street, I finally have time to read as much as I want to. My stack of To-Be-Read books from mystery writer friends is gradually shrinking. I have books on request from the library. I even have the time and space to read a non-fiction book. I usually read non-fiction essays only in the New Yorker. And when a friend asked if I'd read the draft of her family history, I could freely say, "I'd love to," instead of worrying that I'd never find the time.

This is a gift! I'm going to share the gift with you by chronicling here what I'm reading, and plan include a short review of each book. It's still hard to sit at the computer for very long, so I'll try to do one book per day.

Stay tuned for the following:

• A Crafty Killing by Lorraine Barlett
• Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron
• The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
• The Girl I left Behind by Judith Nies
• Who Wrote the Book of Death? by Steve Liskow
• A Single Deadly Truth by John Urban
  

If you've read any of these, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought.