A Silver Lining: Time to Read

Monday, March 23, 2020


Even the worst situations can have a silver lining. Being stuck at home gives me more time to read. Yes, I already read one or two books a week, but church and photo club meetings took a lot of my spare time. So I might as well take advantage of the break to catch up on some of those classics that I either read long ago or planned to read “some day.”

The illustration at the head of this post is from Silas Marner by George Eliot. She has been one of my favorite authors since high school, and it hasn’t been that long since I re-read The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. But I finally got around to re-reading Silas Marner, and it reminded me how much I enjoy some of the old classics.

I’m going to read Moby Dick next. I can’t remember if I ever have, but it would have been a long time ago, anyway. I also downloaded a free version of War and Peace for my Kindle, although I’m not guaranteeing that I’ll read that anytime soon.

Then there are multi-published authors like Charles Dickens. Wikipedia lists twenty “notable works,” and I’ve only read about half of them. I’ve read every book Jane Austin wrote, but if you haven’t, consider picking up Persuasion or Mansfield Park, which are among her lesser-known works.

As you sit at home trying to keep busy, consider reading or re-reading the classics. And if you have children or grandchildren, this is the time to get them interested in the books you read as a child.

That’s the subject of next week’s post.

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The illustration was drawn by Hugh Thomson for a 1907 edition of Silas Marner. It is in the public domain because of its age.

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