Life of Lydia

Dear readers, my mother and I both use an app called Goodreads to track our literary adventures. One feature of the app that I particularly enjoy is writing reviews of books one has read. I write a review for nearly every book that I read, but I am especially proud of the one I wrote for Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I will republish it on this blog post.

I have never before read a book that both broke my heart and filled it up, like Tale of Two Cities did.

Last night, I had 2 hours and 40 minutes left on the audio book which I was listening to whist I followed along in the paper book. It was about 7:30 pm when I sat down to read and I planned to read a few chapters, and then go to bed at a reasonable hour, and in a perfectly composed state of mind, but sometimes life doesn’t go as one expects.

At 8:30 pm I was extremely sleepy, and still had an hour and a half left on the audiobook. This would have been a reasonable time to call it quits, but Defarge had reading the secret letter from Doctor Manette, and the very essence of my being demanded that I continue reading. With this strong of a calling, I could do nothing but obey, so I gathered up my book and audio book listening equipment, and continued my literary adventures at the kitchen table.

I had turned on the bright overhead lights to try to keep myself awake but I quickly realized that was not necessary. The story itself was enough to rouse one out of drowsiness. My heart beat fiercely against my ribs, as the time left on the audio book slowly dwindled away. I won’t spoil it for those of you who have yet to read Tale Of Two Cities, but let’s just say, it has a rather intense ending.

Finally it was 10 pm and I had about 20 minutes of audio book left. My dad instructed me to retire to my bedroom for my “bedtime reading”. This final reading session had the opposite effect of what bedtime stories are supposed to do, but it did succeed in throughly moisturizing my eyes, and putting the finishing touches on the worked up and non sleep compatible state that I had been in for quite some time.

Good job breaking my heart, Charles Dickens.