Maybe I Should Have Reread Middlemarch

When we last got together, I was writing about a book of essays I read while recovering from surgery. I read a number of books while lying around watching HGTV, waiting for all the many holes punched in me to heal. Many of those books were serial mysteries that I bought one after another for my Kindle.

This was a big change from my last surgery (yeah, I've had a few). That time I had one big recovery read, Middlemarch by George Eliot. I was a member of a book club and that was the next month's selection. I believe it was the last time I read a hefty, nineteenth century novel, because it was the last time I had time. I don't remember a lot about the book. There was a woman...and a man. I also remember lying on couches reading it.

The thought that I should read it again while I was recovering this time did pass through my mind. But it passed very quickly.

This past weekend I read about My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. Mead has reread Middlemarch a number of times, evidently getting different things out of the book at different points in her life.

I could have done that, too! I say, "I could have DONE that" and not "I could DO that," because, as I said, my recollection is that Middlemarch is a book that requires a lot of time. And unless I'm recovering from surgery, I just don't have it.

But My Life in Middlemarch is another thing.