I’ve had a problem all of my life relaxing, a colleague of the extreme anxiety I have often suffered. I’m afraid I’ll cease to exist if I stop moving too long or thinking too little. Today, I resolved to do better. I’m thinking about the Sabbath my grandparents observed (usually with my help.)

I did well. Nothing relaxes me more than reading, and I stuck with it. I did have to take a break and blog, or I would be relaxed.

I was determined to break this pattern of work, work, work. I read when I can’t sleep, and since I often can’t sleep, I read a lot. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I stopped working after morning chores and started reading. I am a few pages away from finishing another remarkable book by another imaginative and courageous female first novelist, Katie Hefner.

Her book The Boys is another surprising, creative, and deeply touching book about love, family, and mental illness. It is often not what it seems to be.

I couldn’t put this one down either, two in a row.

I related to this book so utterly I didn’t leave my chair for three hours. I guess I related to one of the hero’s extreme anxiety.  It was rattling me but I was addicted to the story.

The book is about a loving marriage between two very different people and how the adoption of two young boys upends their life and love.

It has a genuinely stunning plot twist – a real whopper –  right in the middle of the book that I was entirely unprepared for and never saw coming. The story refreshed itself in a powerful way.  It was beautiful and gripping at the same time. I won’t give the plot away, of course.

This isn’t a scary or depressing book; it’s an audacious and utterly original book (the Pandemic is a backdrop), but the focus is marriage, patience, love, and trauma. And healing.  I highly recommend it.

When I’m done tonight, I’ll finish Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto, a rich,  rough and tumble, honest, spectacularly satisfying continuation of the Ray Carney series set in violent and troubled Harlem.

Whitehead, who seems unable to write a bad book, is unapologetic about his plunge into literary crime fiction. He’s an excellent writer, and this is a beautiful book. I have one chapter to go.

Interesting how male novelists often focus on violence, blood,  and conflict, and the new generation of gifted female writers focus on non-violent but wrenching explorations of life and love.

I’m paying more and more attention to gender and the amazing fiction coming out of young first novelists, most of whom are female. Eighty percent of fiction readers are female, and the number of fine novels and books by women writers is rapidly increasing.

That is a huge and happy change. Publishing is saved.

Tomorrow I’ll start reading The Rachel Incident by famous Irish Writer Carol O’Donaghue. The Irish writers seem to know how to write fiction in my experience, and this sound like a charming, complex, and engaging book about young friendship.  It’s a huge smash in Ireland; the critics say all the characters are lovable.

I haven’t read any of it yet, but I can’t wait. I’m on a good book roll and eager to share the experience. Am I dangerously WOKE?