Early January Reading and Selling Update

I ended my post about the books I read in 2022 as follows.

I have started reading Suzie by John Benton.  This one is also hilarious.  Suzie buys a gun and practices in the basement.  To cover her practice, she also buys a whip which sounds a lot like a gun.  Suzie calls herself "Suzie the Wonder Whip."  OMG.  This is fun.

I am now feeling strongly motivated to read through all of John Benton's books.  I hope I can keep myself going, but going back to work could put a stop to it if I end up too tired.  I will read as much as I can this week and will hope for the best beginning next week.

After I read Suzie, I read Sherri and then Lori.  I posted about Lori on Facebook.

Lori is a troubled teenager who wants some painkillers.  She plans to have her younger sister, Peggy, steal the painkillers for her.  But Lori needs to create a distraction.

Lori strips off her clothes and runs around inside the drugstore while Peggy steals the painkillers!  I could hardly read due to how hard I was laughing!

For the scans of the text, follow this link.  You should be able to view the images even if you're not on Facebook.

Despite my initial enthusiasm, my ability to stay focused and continue to read books is quite weak.  I nearly lost my focus this weekend.  I started reading Marji... and lost my enthusiasm.

Marji is a wealthy woman of 25 years old.  She turns down the opportunity to run her father's company.  Rather, she wants to share God's love with the prostitutes and junkies of Lower East Side, New York City.  Very quickly I realized that this book would be different in that the primary character had it together and would be helping others.  I lost my enthusiasm, since I just wanted to read over-the-top crazy stuff.

I went around 48 hours without attempting to read past the beginning of the book.  I was at a standstill, and I told myself that I couldn't let this stop me from reading through my set of John Benton's books.

I didn't want to abandon the book, but sometimes that is the only way.  I will not attempt to force myself to read a book when doing so will cause me to quit reading completely.

When I read through the entire Sweet Valley High series, I ended up reading 171 of the 181 books in the set.  I skipped 10 books because I found them boring.  Someone commented, "Just curious, but why did you skip 10 of the special series?  You were so close to reading all 181, it seems like a shame to stop 10 short..."

What a way to invalidate my accomplishment of reading nearly the entire SVH set.  I replied, "I was already halfway sick of my SVH reading experience by the time those books appear in the set, so trying to read them might have caused me to quit reading the set.  It's better to skip a few books than end up stopping short of reading the set by 50 to 75 books.  I am quite pleased with myself that I read 171 of 181 books, even if others might think I failed by not reading every single one of them."

Anyway...

I want to read John Benton's books, but I'm not going to waste energy on a book if it doesn't interest me.  After 48 hours, I decided to give Marji another try.  I read a little more to give the book a better chance of grabbing my interest.  I quickly learned that Marji's family has a big secret.  Oh...!

I became intrigued.  Marji's family isn't as together as I thought.  Sure, they're quite wealthy, but the family has a black sheep.  Marji didn't even know.  Ooh, I wanted to know more, and I knew instinctively that Marji would cross paths with the black sheep.

The book had captured my interest.  I quickly read through all of Marji and then started on the second book in the trilogy, Marji and the Kidnap Plot.  I hope that I can keep going, but the last few days have been a reminder of how tenuous my hold on reading is.  If I end up finding any of Benton's books uninteresting, then I will be at risk of being derailed.    

On December 31, I wrote:

I expect for my stores to remain closed for at least two to three more weeks.  It could be a bit longer, depending upon how events play out.  Since I'm on winter break, I'm doing okay.  I am having spells of sudden deep fatigue, but I'm at home where it doesn't matter.  I can loll around for an hour or so until my energy level recovers.  The real test will be when I go back to work on January 6.  At that time, I'll truly know how I'm doing.

Now it's two weeks later.  I went back to work on January 6 for a half day of meetings and ended up wiped out on Saturday.  I slept for a few hours during the day and continued to feel quite tired all evening.  I spent the entire evening watching all four Bonita Granville Nancy Drew movies from the 1930s.  Feeling lethargic finally got me to watch all four of those movies, which I have never been interested in watching.  They were what I expected, but at least I've now seen them.

Today was the first day of the second semester.  For around 1 1/2 hours this morning, I felt like death.  I don't use the expression "felt like death" lightly.  I mean, it was bad.  I drank an energy drink and began to feel better.  Fortunately, the very worst of it was during my planning period, and I was okay for the rest of the day. 

I do want to begin selling again, but I must let this week play out to see how good or bad I end up feeling.  I will have an idea tomorrow when I will see how today has impacted me.

If this week goes okay, then I might reopen my stores later this week.  If this week goes badly, then I might end up waiting two or three more weeks.  Keep your fingers crossed.  I do want to reopen.  I have even thought of a few more items that I could sell from my collection.