Not Knowing

 I am finding this week that I don't want to read. I'm not sure what the issue is, really. I love books, and I am still reading David Copperfield with Liz at bedtime, but I haven't picked up my own book, except just for a few minutes at a time. Instead, I spend more time than usual on Facebook, or playing Spelling Bee on the NYT website.

Liz has been playing Spelling Bee for a while. She enjoys it. I found it now, and I also enjoy it. I have always liked word games. We do the crossword puzzle every Sunday. Now we play Spelling Bee. As we are under one subscription, we play the same game. I should probably stop. I should let Liz enjoy her game. After all, she pays for the subscription. Most days, I wait until late in the day to see what words she has come up with, and then I see if I can find more. Sometimes I can, but not always. Liz has a pretty good vocabulary, and she has playing longer, who she remembers words that appear in the game.

Maybe I don't want to read because the books I'm reading are hard to read. I just finished The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. It has brutal, violent scenes. Torture, murder, all kinds of atrocities are depicted. I expect many or most of these things actually happened in cases during slavery, though a couple of the places Cora goes have societies different from actual history, but still depicted in ways that show human nature and certain tendencies in actions. Group dynamics were illustrated in horrifying detail. I understand a little about group dynamics, and it can be frightening. Committees tend toward the extremes because those with extreme views tend to be more aggressive about advocating for their ideas. I just don't want to go along.

I am also finding that I don't remember anything about David Copperfield. Not a character, not a scene. I am almost beginning to doubt I read it. Maybe it's just that my memory isn't as good as I always thought it was. I have noticed that I depend on checking facts to get things right, because I find all kinds of errors in my memories. I guess I'll let the algorithms handle that.