LAS CRUCES – There’s nothing quite like a summer beach book,
and that holds true even in high desert county. We may not have the lakes and
rivers and oceans of my other coastal and peninsula summer haunts. But we have
the beaches (or at, least, the vast, contemplative expanses of sand). And the
books.
Usually, I stash away lots of books for my vacation. But in
recent years, I never seemed to get around to reading them.
It’s part of an escalating syndrome. I, who once read eight
to ten books a week, now seem to have trouble finding time and eye power to get
through a dozen in six months. Sometimes, sigh, even fewer.
I attribute some of that to obligatory screen time. Laptop
and tablet screens. PC screens and cellphone screens. Flat screen TVs. And blue
light bevies of assorted other screens that stare at us at home and the office,
in doctors’ offices, hospitals, shopping centers, airports and many other serendipitous
sites. And we stare right back.
After a long hard day of close encounters of the screen
kind, I often find myself too weary to contemplate anything that requires
interaction, which leaves me with yet another screen to end my day, viewing
prerecorded TV programs, passive-aggressively fast-forwarding through ads and
boring parts. (There is, I confess, some satisfaction in this, a kind of sense
of atonement for not being able to skip, switch off or fast-forward through the
boring and irritating portions of the rest of our lives.)
But that satisfaction has its price, too. Back in the day, I
was able to read a couple of books each week during the commercials of an
evening of must-see TV. That leisurely rhythm seems lost forever as even mindless
TV watching turns into a type A personal best competition. (Could I beat my
all-time record and get through five hours of recorded programs in four, three
or two hours?)
In a rare week without TV, the pleasures of books came back
to me. I spent most of the week savoring, rather than speed-reading “The Last
Ranch,” the final book in Michael McGarrity’s wonderful American West trilogy,
set primarily in Las Cruces and the Tularosa Basin. It’s also an origin story
and prequel for the dozen Kevin Kerney novels, which I also love. Plan a long
vacay and read as many of ‘em as you can.
In a nice bit of synchronicity, I was reading about the last
ranchers to hold out when the government took over land for secret atom bomb
tests, when soulmate Roger proposed a visit to Los Alamos, and we got to see
films and exhibits and the actual homes of the scientists who were making the
bomb a reality.
After that, I read a little book about Georgia O’Keeffe in
the very land she painted and where I was lucky enough to meet and interview
her in her last decade of life. Next, I got into “Versions of Us,” by Laura
Barnett, a thought-provoking tale of a couple who met and married young in one
vignette and led star-crossed and complicated lives in other versions,
including one in which they missed connections until their 70s. Another good
read.
Then, tempted by a nice little library in our vacay house, I
polished off “The Lake House,” my first-ever James Patterson blockbuster. It
was a real beach book, about the adventures of beautiful teens with wings,
thanks to modern miracles of genetic engineering. Without giving too much away,
the book didn’t lay an egg, but the beautiful flying heroine did, and I suspect
there’s a sequel out there. Maybe I’ll look for it or wait for the movie version.
Or maybe not.
Driving to and from Santa Fe, I listened to most of “A Fine
Romance,” read by the autobiography’s author, Candice Bergen. Back home, I
dropped off the CDs at the Branigan Library and checked out the book, and read
the last chapters the old fashioned way.
In fact, it was a couple of days before I turned on the TV,
and I’ve found myself going back to old habits of reading through the
commercials and boring parts, instead of fast-forwarding. And drifting off into
peaceful, night-long slumber.
I think I may be on to something. Maybe I’ll increase the
book time and cut down the screen time (and that includes ebooks and all online
text forms) and return to basic paper pages again. I’d almost forgotten how
much fun it can be to immerse yourself in a real book.
S. Derrickson Moore may be
reached at 575-541-5450, dmoore@lcsun-news.com or @derricksonmoore on Twitter.
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