I thought mom weathered the hectic and short-lived visit with friends the previous two days, because I felt comfortable enough to leave the house for the afternoon. I stopped at Starbucks on Boonesboro, then traveled down Rivermont to the library. I was familiar with their collections by this time, as I already had gone through the eight books in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, as well as the five books contained in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I read the former as a dare to myself, and the latter so I could understand my daughter's fascination with the movies based on those books.
This time I listed The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders, Indiscretion by Charles Dubow, Deeply Odd by Dean Koontz, and House of Earth by Woody Guthrie as my borrowed reads. I don't remember reading any one of these four books, and I don't know why. I do remember the premise of Deeply Odd, because my late husband and I discovered "Odd Thomas" during one trip to Virginia as we listened to a book on CD. I became slightly addicted to poor Odd.
I won't know why I don't remember those four books in particular until I go through the upcoming memories that Facebook holds. I do know that, after my husband died in 2015, I couldn't read for years. I couldn't concentrate enough, and my retention of what I did read was at zero. Only recently, almost ten years after his death, have I been able to read and retain information. Fiction bores me now, even Stephen King. What I crave is non-fiction works that prove I am now capable of learning and retaining.
Who am I trying to prove anything to? Myself. I think that's important.
Photo by Vincenzo Malagoli at Pexels.