Midwinter Break

I just finished my sixth book of 2018.  This was one I chose just browsing the library's downloadable eBook collection.  It popped up as a recommended and available book.  I didn't want to wait so I took a chance.  I liked the cover art, and frankly ::gasp:: I choose a lot of books simply based off their cover!

It was a relatively slow read for me, but also the first eBook I've read this year.  I prefer a physical book to hold, but there is just something so convenient about a digital book on my phone that I can read anywhere, anytime.  Not that I don't usually have a physical book with me as well because I usually do.  In fact I have two in the bag I carry around regularly, and one in my car!  But standing in line at the grocery checkout, or waiting a few minutes before the kids get out of school, I can simply pull out my phone and start reading right then and there.

I'd considered abandoning this book several times while reading it.  It's a sad story of an older married Irish couple, retired, and on a holiday to Amsterdam.  She's religious, and he's not.  He's an alcoholic, and she rarely drinks at all.  They bicker and banter like you'd expect any old married couple.  He teases her.  She takes care of everything important.  As many times as I wanted to just delete the book and stop reading, I also wanted to know how their story would end.  I had to know!  

The writing is choppy and chaotic, like thoughts were just tossed out on the page as quickly as the characters would think them and and as jumbled as thoughts can be at times.  We skip from one time or context to the next in our brains, with one memory triggering another and another.  That's how this book felt reading it.  But I kept on, because I had to know.  Could they or would they work out in the end or would it be the end?

In the end I'm not sure my questions were answered, but I am glad I stuck with the book.  It's one I probably would not have read had I not challenged myself to read new and different things this year in my quest to read and track so many books.  It's given me a lot to think about, which is really all you can ask for from any book!