[blockquote]”I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be.” Douglas Adams[/blockquote]

Week 7 started out very strong. With the President’s Day holiday on Monday, I got a solid start on this week’s book. However, it quickly got blown out of the water with the busy-ness of life and work. Complicating matters was that by Thursday night, I knew there was no way I could possibly finish the 360+ pages I still had to read (and that was with my having already knocked out 130 pages). Furthermore, I was enjoying this book so much that I didn’t want to jam it into two days–too reminiscent of the college cram and not the goal of this project at all.

 

So I made an executive decision: I put the book on hold so that I could keep reading it at an enjoyable pace at a later date, and so I picked up something smaller. More to come on the on-hold book in a future post.

 

The something smaller book was an amazon.com recommendation that was a slim and interesting 240 pages that I was certain I could read in a couple of days.

 

WRONG.

 

There’s something very special about the amazon-recommended book that I had downloaded in just a few moments to my Kindle. It was also one that needed time for focused reading and reflection.

 

CRAP.

 

This challenge is not getting the best of me in week 7!

 

Executive decision number 2: I scanned my bookshelves and picked up an even smaller book (a play, actually) August: Osage County by Tracy Letts.

 

Letts is the son of novelist Billie Letts (Where the Heart is and The Honk and Holler Opening Soon) and a native of Oklahoma. His play, which in addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, ran on Broadway from 2007-2009 and picked up a Tony in the process.

 

I haven’t read a play since my high school acting days; and never before have I read a play like this. Letts pulls together in three acts a multi-layered tragicomedy with dialogue that is so spot on I felt like I was overhearing a real-life conversation unfolding. The play centers around the Westons, a family forced back together by the death of one of their own. As is common with these types of reunions, when families have been separated for some time, old wounds are opened and new ones form as the family struggles with funeral arrangements and the getting on of getting on. It’s like family dysfunction on overdrive and Letts deftly balances the awkward silences and vicious verbal spars with moments of comic relief and clarity that propel both the story and the reader forward.

 

This was another gift from my folks, and having been signed by the playwright himself it’s a bit extra special. I never would have heard of this or thought to pick it up, but his talents are obvious and his words worth reading. Especially after two extremely worthy but ultimately false starts that will have to join this reading challenge later in the process.


Rating: 4 stars
Pages: 138
Genre: Play