WWW.WEDNESDAY

 

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

PS I can no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.

1. What are you currently reading? Teammate by David Ross. As we head into August, when the trade deadline approaches and the pennant races tighten up, I'm all baseball all the time. This is the perfect book for me right now. 

David Ross was 38 when he landed in Chicago. Not many teams were clamoring for his services because he had a reputation for being a pain in the ass, not so much a has-been but a never-was. He was set to be the Cubs back-up catcher, playing maybe every 5 or 6 games when ace Jon Lester took the mound. He ended up being one of the motors that propelled the Cubs to the 2016 World Series and he even got a homer in the greatest game 7 of all time.

I'm not deep into this yet, but if he tells it well, Rossy has something to teach us about life beyond baseball. (Not that I care much about life beyond baseball right now.)

2. What did you recently finish reading? Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld. 500 pages of fun. Yes, it's a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and if you're familiar with Austen you'll recognize and know. But if the name "Darcy" means nothing to you, you'll still enjoy it.

Liz is the oldest of the five Bennet girls. Her dad tends the family fortune, makes rueful asides, and is, in his way, fighting to regain his health after a crisis. Mrs. Bennet is a social climber, impulse shopper, and a thoroughly silly woman. Liz' four sisters, all unmarried, are trying to shape their own identities and destinies. Dr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a Stanford-educated neurosurgeon relocated to Cincinnati, is a sharp-eyed observer of everything around him.

Jane Austen was a product of her time and didn't have the fertile ground Sittenfeld does. From reality TV to cell phones to Keto, this book says something about our current lives but moving the story to our century. This isn't high art, but I had a great time with it.

 

3. What will read next? I don't know.

 

 

 

On the phone with my friend's therapist

OK, that's not literally true. I spent an hour on the phone with my oldest friend last night, and while she seemed peaceful and we laughed a lot, I noticed that much of our conversation sounded nothing like her. It sounded like I was talking to a collection of inspirational refrigerator magnets. 

"I trust that there is good in the universe."

"I wasted time worrying about what I can't control."

"I'm processing everything that happened.”

I was alternately annoyed and amused. It felt like I was talking to her shrink, when all I wanted was to talk to my friend.

But then I was happy. My oldest friend is bipolar, and at times I have been very, very worried that she hasn’t been consulting her shrink. Obviously, she’s now not only speaking to a mental health professional, she’s taking it to heart. 

Or “processing it.”

I believe that, for now, she’s in fake-it-till-you-make-it mode. And that’s fine. I love her very much and want her to be happy.