Kay Hudson

I spent most of today reading, and all it took was a visit to my Toyota dealer’s service department (Star Toyota in League City, Texas, and I recommend them highly).  And a rather large bill (but that’s another story, and the car deserves some TLC, and that new set of tires, at 154,500 miles).

Of course I took my Kindle with me (and I wasn’t the only one in the waiting room with an e-reader).  First off, I finished the book I’d been dawdling over for weeks (because at home I mostly read on paper), Michael J. Fox’s memoir Lucky Man.  I think I downloaded this when it was a Kindle Daily Deal a while back, not because it’s a celebrity memoir but because it’s about Fox’s coming to terms with Parkinson’s Disease.  My grandfather suffered from Parkinson’s, decades ago when there was no treatment, never mind a cure.  He died in a nursing home when I was in high school; sadly when I was a little girl he was already a rather frightening old man who couldn’t communicate, at least not with children.  Fox’s story is touching and ultimately optimistic, and I certainly wish him the best.  I don’t think I ever watched Family Ties or Spin City, but I understand he’s planning to return to series TV in a family sitcom, playing a man who just happens to have Parkinson’s.  I’ll definitely tune in.

I finished that about the time the service rep came to tell me all that my car needed beyond its regular major service (something involving a valve gasket, something involving the brakes, cleaning the headlight covers, and the aforementioned new tires.  I understood the headlights and the tires perfectly), and how much longer it would all take.  So I started browsing through the collections on my Kindle, and decided that I have way too many choices there.  (And you  and I both know that won’t stop me from downloading more.  Possibly tonight.)

I settled on a romantic suspense novella by my friend Cheryl Bolen, Capitol Offense.  A contemporary tale set in Austin, this is quite a change from Cheryl’s Regency romances.  Fast paced and exciting right up to the last pages, just the thing for a spell in the waiting room.  (At the moment Capitol Offense is available free at Amazon as an introduction to Cheryl’s contemporary suspense series, Texas Heroines in Peril.)

Still had time to wait when I finished that, so I turned to my “Craft of Writing” collection and skimmed through Lori Wilde’s Got High Concept? workbook.  Lots of good ideas there, and I plan to go through it in more detail on the Kindle app on my computer.  Then I opened Joni Rodgers’ First You Write, and made it through most of the second chapter by the time my car was ready to go.

One more book, although I finished reading it (on paper) a couple of days ago:  Spencer Quinn’s latest Chet and Bernie mystery, A Fistful of Collars, is the fifth installment in the series, and just as enjoyable as the earlier books.  Chet the Jet, detective dog extraordinaire, narrates these stories, in his own frequently distracted style, and his canine point of view is often hilarious and always endearing.  Highly recommended to anyone who loves mysteries and dogs.