A Cool, Dark, Rainy Saturday with Books and Candles

With all of our trees in full leaf, a rainy day is ever so dark indoors. Hence, my trip to North Creek to buy my favorite "Northern Light" tapered candles, in dark reds and spruce green, to keep me comforted while reading all the afternoon long, very deeply. Saturday was a rest day after a busy week.

I started the day journal writing, and after the trip to buy candles, I immersed myself in reading one of May Sarton's published journals that I have never read, Recovering: A Journal, which was written when she was 66 and 67 years old, in 1978-79,  a time of crisis and nearly insurmountable challenges in her life. May Sarton was a European-born American, a distinguished and award-winning poet, novelist, memoirist,  academic, and feminist, who lived from 1912-1995.

Her most well-known work is Journal of a Solitude, written in her late 40s,  which was embraced by American women of all ages during and after the second wave of feminism in the U.S. in the late 1970s, and the 1980s, and 1990s. If you have not read it, it remains her most beloved work and is still her most popular and most widely read book today.

I read it in the early 1980s and consider it one of the best books I've ever read. I read it when I was not yet married and saw no potential of ever being married. I believe I gravitated to it because she described her challenges as a writer, she wrote about the solace of nature, gardens, and animals (she was one hell of a gardener, indoors and out), and she contemplated what it is to be a fallible human being, in life and in love and in failure. In her journals, she speaks to me, so openly and honestly, that I am drawn close to her experience.

And so it is, exactly the same, with Recovering: A Journal. I couldn't put it down.

The rest of the afternoon I devoted to Sharon Kay Penman's Time and Chance, about Henry II and Thomas Becket. I'm halfway through this chunky chunkster and it looks as though perhaps Thomas is on his way out after trying to hold on to his role as Archbishop of Canterbury. An atmospheric read and one that does not disappoint in this rendering of Henry II's reign.