A pleasantly dull day

A remarkably uneventful few days! Was sick, got well, went to work, got up way too early, thanks to wretched daylight savings time, went to church way too early (see previous,) came home, took nap, went to church again. Pleasant, but not the sort of thing thrilling sagas are made of.
The most signal event is not really an event at all. I am reading Sylvia’s Lovers on my little ebook reader. This is signal in that I even have a reader, in that I got a book downloaded onto it, and that the book is Sylvia’s Lovers. As you no doubt know (or more likely don’t know, since it is not a best seller,) it’s by Mrs. Gaskell – authoress of Cranford which has recently been a Masterpiece Theater serialization. I have two very separate friends, one a literature professor colleague of my former spouse, and the other a well-read friend, who both claim that Cranford is the world’s greatest novel. When the first one (the friend of Dennis) told me this, I was astonished that anyone could think such a thing. Everyone knows that the world’s greatest novel is either Our Mutual Friend or Middlemarch, although I recently decided that it might possibly be Huckleberry Finn. Then when, years later, another absolutely unrelated friend said the same thing about Cranford, I was floored. I have to confess that rereading it recently gave me pause. Could they be correct? It is such a humble little jewel – perfect in its quietly restrained way. As to Sylvia’s Lovers, I had read it decades ago and liked it very much. I have been wanting to read it again but could not find a copy of it. So this is a thrill of sorts.
The primary disadvantage of the ebook reader, in my mind, is that you have to actually turn it off when you go to sleep. Generally, I drift away to the land of Nod with my light still on, and my book still in my hand. When the book crashes to the floor, it wakens me, and I groggily turn off the light. This won’t do on two counts. The crash would be unhealthy for the device, and the battery would run down. I don’t know why this seems like such a pain, but it does. I need to get a separate book for the final few minutes of every day. That will solve my problem.