SUMMER READS. BY V. JOLENE MILLER
READING ON THE RUN
Binge reading on the run because everything else can wait.
ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
I live in remote Alaska where I work 40+ hours a week at my day job, write novels, and own a pop-up book shop. In my spare time, I chase after grandbabies and go running with my giant puppy, Omar. Always, I carry a book in my purse. I never know when I’ll get a few minutes to indulge in a good read. Fifteen minutes before dawn, at lunch, bundled up in my car by the river, or right before falling into bed. Reading is my resting place.
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AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2021
I started drafting this column with the intent of focusing on how this summer vacation won’t happen due to a couple of recent, big life events. Like last summer’s trip that evolved into something else, so did this column. Last summer, COVID-19 canceled our vacation to California. We ended up taking a two-week fall vacation to Galveston Island, Texas. While there, we managed to survive Tropical Storm Bertha. Not only was it our first trip to GI, but it was our first tropical storm experience. What a year. Anyway, the weeks leading up to that trip were filled with changes that dramatically impacted my reading. I didn’t end up taking last year’s reading list (Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement, Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing, and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See) with me to Texas. Instead, I packed a few textbooks and hunkered down over the coffee table of that beach rental and studied. It was...interesting. There was (is) so little time to get it all done! According to the website for the school I’m attending, the PhD program in education should take up approximately 20 hours per week. That means 20 hours to read, research, study for quizzes and exams, write papers, and reply and respond to discussion board posts. This expectation equates to the most basic of part-time jobs. Note: I have no data to back up that claim, except to say that I have found the typical 40-hour a week job to often take more than 40 hours each week to complete. During the course of that glorious fall vacation, I had my nose in a (text)book for at least 20 hours each week.
