He was surrounded by books of every type. Waiting patiently for him to finish one then select his next foray into escapism.
That’s the beauty of books, there doesn’t seem to be any end of them, and each one the product of a talent far greater than his own.
He read with great passion, exploring worlds separate from his own, marvelling at the imagination of authors who took him into the minds of criminals, to people living in towns or cities and coping with the everyday turmoil of life.
There didn’t seem to be a topic that wasn’t explored in one way or another. The loneliness of people, the violence of domestic situations which sometimes ended in a pleasing resolution and sometimes the writer allowed him to travel over a cliff and see the utter futility of the actions of one over another.
He was particularly drawn to local authors for no other reason than feeling he wanted to support local writers who were going about the business of providing him with entertainment. Apart from that many were excellent writers and he would have loved to write a book of his own, but he had come to understand he had the attention span of a goldfish meaning he could only concentrate of a topic for a limited amount of time before his mind wandered to something else and he grew tired of the topic he was at that time writing. Five hundred words and he was done though there had been times when he’d explored a subject for longer than he might normally do so.
As he aged, he grew content to read the works of others and let his own writing reflect their writing, after all, playing with words was in his mind such a fun thing to do. He wasn’t into copying the writings he read but rather to see if he could adopt one or two of their methods into his own writing. He’d certainly done it with some characters he repeatedly wrote, and that was fun.
So he looked over at his growing library and wondered which of the growing list of unread volumes he might be drawn to next.
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/05/21/tale-weaver-276-books-21st-may/
Morpethroad 
Reading is the best way to use the time at hand.
Thanks Sadje we seem to have a lot of it.
We do. And the best use of it is to broaden our minds.
I’m thinking here’s an element of autobiography 🙂
There’s always an element of myself in every story 😀.
That’s how you make them sound real, like the truth
Maybe it’s a gift I have.
Treasure it 🙂
Years ago my old house had room for a library area. Last year when I thought I was moving I gave away most of my books 😦 One of my biggest feats in teaching was to get children to love reading. I think I may have a few success stories out there….
A great achievement as getting some kids reading was no mean feat.
That looks just like a second hand bookstore we had in an arcade in Penrith. The owner seemed to know where a book was, but it was impossible to find what you were looking for yourself.