Summertime and the reading is easy

Blue Bird of Happiness
collage and zentangle

"Summertime and the reading is easy. Fiction is calling, and the book pile is high. Oh, your library card is smoking and your glasses need cleaning. So hush little reader, just you enjoy." - My apologies to Gershwin (Norah Jones singing).

As a teacher, I value the opportunity to recharge during the summer vacation. Many would say that teachers cram a year's worth of work into ten months and they would be right. For those of you who have never taught, please don't comment negatively about teachers and working conditions. The two most common responses I get when I say I am a high school science teacher are: "God Bless You" and "You'd never catch me doing that job." Enough said.

Part of the recharging process for me is to immerse myself in reading a variety of titles. Not to mention I download plenty of titles from my public library's catalogue in order to listen while I'm out working in the garden, walking, or driving about. So with the additional free time on my hands (there are all those projects that get put off during school that need doing hence the audiobooks) I will have the chance to read and get some blogging in.

Summertime and the reading is easy ....

Vanessa Greene's
The Seafront Tearoom

For all my fellow school teachers - rejoice for summer is here! Time for relaxation and getting all the jobs we've put off doing all school year like painting the bathroom, cleaning the basement, making appointments with doctors or dentists, etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately I set myself up for failure and disappointment when faced with the arm's length list for summer chores so I've learned to take each day as it comes and do some little task. Keep the expectations low and you will be pleasantly pleased when you achieve even more.

So far I've spent my first two days of summer vacation tidying up around the house, doing laundry, working in the garden and ferrying a parent to a doctor's appointment. Oh yes - and reading. At first I couldn't settle down with a title - should it be something improving? Work related? Emotional? No - it should be something light and fun and summery. My second experience with Vanessa Greene's tea themed novels,  The Seafront Tearoom, delivered just what I needed. It is a story about women with challenges in their life that had to be faced. Women who needed to decide in which direction did they want their lives to go in. Women who needed companionship and found it in making new friends over a cup of tea.

Greene has presented me with several good themes to ponder at a time of transition in my own life. The end of the school year is always a challenging transition; grateful to have completed a year, a bit run down, a bit disenchanted, even managing to begin planning for the next school year, in much need of a break to regroup. I'm not going to go into a diatribe regarding the misunderstood challenges of teaching here, but I do want to say that between the stresses of a job and home life, regardless of what you do, a break is necessary to recharge the batteries before picking up the daily battle once more. Isn't it lovely that reading can be the conduit for that? Even just a couple of pages a day can bring respite. I'm so amazed when colleagues say they don't have time to read during the school year. I would simply die if I didn't make some time, even 15 minutes, for some personal reading every day. Reading is what helps to keep me sane. My advice - brew a cup a tea and sit with a fun book!

The "I Can't Put it Down" Books

Ruth Galloway stories and a
trowel one of her tools of the trade.

Some time back I picked up Elly Griffiths' The House at Sea's End at the library and brought it home. I managed a chapter or two but for some reason couldn't get into the story. A couple of weeks ago I found myself at the bookstore and in need of a good mystery. I love to escape into the world of whodunits and summer vacation is a perfect time to indulge in this pastime. There I was perusing the shelves when Griffiths' titles caught my eye. I read the back of the cover and decided to give it a second try.

Back home with the book, I sat out on the deck and started in and promptly got hooked. I couldn't put it down. I stayed up late in the night reading and polished it off the following morning. Enthralled I went to the library to look for other titles, but sadly only found one more which I read thirstily.

I like Ruth Galloway the main character. She's not super sexy but rather a dowdy overweight smart woman - an archaeologist of all things. She aids Detective Nelson and his colleagues in their work. Unfortunately, I haven't read some of the earlier stories in order to get the full back story between Galloway and Nelson but  I know enough to understand that Galloway's daughter Kate was the result. In these two novels that I've read children are a focus. As a parent it is a bit unsettling for we all know that crimes occur to children and that there is real heartbreak when they do. It is our worst nightmare that something should happen to our children. My own children are old enough for me to be past the fears of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) where you quietly sneak in their rooms to make sure they still breathing while praying they don't wake up. I'm past the school day fears and now I'm on to the college fears. The need to let go and let your children go off and explore the world and make their own mistakes. You can warn them of the dangerous pitfalls that loom but they need to discover them for themselves.

Parenthood changes you, and it changes the characters that we read about. Ruth herself has had to learn that. She is torn by the pressures that working mothers face: the job and the children. There is no good answer, and you are forever doubting your decision making. The most you can hope for is that you choose wisely and that everything will work out alright.