ONE-DAY BOOKS

THE PEARL, BY JOHN STEINBECK

Delycia and I promised ourselves several weeks ago that we will spend one day each month of 2014 reading a single book from start to finish, even if we have to read from dawn to dark. We thought it might be fun to immerse ourselves in a book for a single day, to saturate ourselves with it and slowly soak it up in an uninterrupted way. Of course, it’s fairly easy for us to do this in these retirement years. We can wake in the morning with no responsibilities other than to turn the pages of the book we’ve chosen for that day. We’re thinking of these special days as sort of one-day reading carnivals, non-stop festivals of sentences, day-long parties with plots and characters.

     Today we had fun with our first one-day book, John Steinbeck’s The Pearl. We read, paused to discuss, read some more, took notes, took some lunch, and let the last few pages linger along to the bittersweet ending. It’s a short book, a good way to start our year-long project. Next up, on February 5, is a surprise book for Delycia. Can’t wait for the party!