Recently I received a
Penguin Random House email that touted the many benefits of reading.
They included improving memory by activating the parts of your brain
that create new synapses for memory; making you smarter by enhancing
vocabulary, improving articulation, and increasing creativity; making
you more empathetic by improving understanding of others' beliefs and
views; as well as relieving stress and lowering blood pressure.
But this one made me
laugh. Improves Sleep: Incorporating a reading routine into your
bedtime ritual tells your body it's time to wind down and get some
sleep. Because who hasn't snuggled into bed for a good read and
only to blearily wake up some time later with the book flopped askew
on a body part. And woe If it happens to be a weighty tome!
We do have one weighty
tome in this year's bookgroup selections: Anna Karenina by
Leo Tolstoy. It was my nomination and a novel that I read
rapturously back in my younger days, in the 1961 translation by David
Magarshack (which I still have in battered paperback form). There
are several newer translations, and I intend to read one of those
this time. After our encounter with Madame Bovary by Gustave
Flaubert in 2017, it seemed appropriate that we should share and
discuss the story of one of the other most famous fictional 19th
century women.
I doubt that Anna
will be all that sleep-inducing, but I have been finding my eyelids
drooping over next month's book: Censoring an Iranian Love Story
by Shahriar Mandanipour, a very unconventional novel, to say the
least. Yet it is this sort of book that I might not ordinarily read
that makes our bookgroup so worthwhile. I'm looking forward to
learning more about this novel, this author, this culture, and
discussing it with a group of articulate and open-minded women. If
you are in the Dallas area and like reading interesting and often
challenging books, please come join us.
