Hi there, dear reader,
I’m emailing the contest giveaway winners as soon as I hit send on this! And thanks again to both those who’ve been here awhile and those newly signed up.
It’s been a helluva week, and as we roll into a new one, it still is. I write this with my feet up on my mom’s hospital bed. She’s asleep, and we’re back at the ER. It’s a long, confusing saga, with nine room changes so far and two different facilities involved. The ER doctor is the same one who admitted her for the bad reaction to a spinal test a week ago Friday (he reminds me A LOT of Harry Anderson as Harry T. Stone from Night Court, a show which our whole family used to watch and my mom is a huge prankster and even had her own can of fake snakes back then). “We have to stop meeting like this,” we all said.
I find him incredibly comforting.
Mom’s spirits have stayed up, despite the labyrinth of room numbers and the back surgery that will be waiting at the end of all of this so she can really get better. She’s where I get my inherent optimism from. (I used to think I’d grow up to be a cynic, and I’m so glad I didn’t.) I appreciate so much everyone who’s been pulling for her and for us, and checking in. It means more than you know. Annnd Dr. Not-Harry T. Stone just came in and said that they feel like this is just a normal remnant of healing from the emergency procedure for problem #2 of last week and she’ll be okay to go back to the rehab hospital to continue spinal recovery. So a much better verdict than it might’ve been. Whew.
Anyway, the past week has been a white-knuckle, exhaustion affair. We Bonds never do anything the easy or simple way. And so I haven’t managed to read much of anything except Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart for book club. A lack of reading progress is how I know when I’m truly spread thin. Though, of course, my mom asked me—when her e-reader wouldn’t connect up at the new place—to bring her some “good reads.” She lit up immediately at the sight of Megan Shepherd’s Malice House (which is fabulous and if you like a gothic thriller, a must-read). “I’ve read her before—that one will be good,” Mom said. It is, in fact, the book she said to pack in her stuff on the way over here. The nurse noted that hopefully she wouldn’t be here long enough to need another. But, in our family, we always pack a book. Or three.
(Mom has always loved going with me to festivals and getting books by other authors I’m friends with. And I always pick up a couple of books and get them signed for her, too.)
I’m not sure what I’m going to read next, but I feel like I’ve settled enough into the marathon of now that I’m ready for something. Certainly one of the absolute best compliments that I’ve ever received as an author is that a book I wrote helped get someone through a difficult time: chemo, recovery, endless waiting room stints. I have vivid memories of reading Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew short story collection in the waiting room as a kid when one of my papaws was in the hospital. I can still see that floor with those big beige squares under my sneakered foot, the shape reflected in the horrific cold fluorescent panels above. Horror might not seem like the most obvious comfort reading, but sometimes you just need the book to suck you in and keep you from looking away for a few hours. I’ve also read dozens of romances in moments of personal apocalypse.
Question Time
Anyway, thinking about this, I’m curious what books have gotten you through difficult times or kept you from screaming in anxious boredom (maybe the worst kind!) in the waiting rooms of your life? Do you have an especially vivid memory of one? And, if not, what books would you recommend as sure-fire “good reads” for a frantic yet hurry up and wait, hospital-molasses-time escape hatch?
More soon,
G
I was really into The Princess Bride in the summer of 2001, so the movie and book became my refuge a lot around 9/11 and during a traumatic shooting in 2002. And then, around 2019 and the beginning of the pandemic, I used A Court of Thorns and Roses as my escape from reality.
I had to be hospitalized for a few days my freshman year of high school, and my dad brought me ALL his Tom Clancy novels. Totally not my thing, but they were brought with such love, so it helped.