Literary lethargy

Since as long as I can remember - or very nearly as long as I can remember - I have enjoyed reading.  I have always been able to lose myself in books.  As a child it might have been  Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree followed, as I grew older, by her Famous Five and Secret Seven.  Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books were a joy, as were the Jennings and Biggles stories.  My tastes have changed a little since those days and it would be difficult to name even a small fraction of the authors I have read and - mostly - enjoyed.  My preference is for novels although I have included a smattering of travel, history and even, on one or two occasions, biography.

People who consider themselves superior might well sneer at my choice of John Grisham, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Goddard and Peter James and suggest that my reading material provides me with nothing more than a form of escapism.  That is quite possibly so, but it is my choice and it is me that enjoys it.  At least, I did so until recently.

I find it both perplexing and a trifle worrying that my enthusiasm for turning the pages seems to have disappeared.  There was a time when I would pick up my book whenever I found myself with even a minute to spare - but not lately.  I started a newish Bernard Cornwell book the other day, a rather blood-thirsty tale set in about 950AD during the reign of King Alfred, and would normally have expected to have got well over half way through it by now, but instead I am still only on the third chapter.

And there's another thing.  I have lost my whistle.  Not completely, but enough for it to embarrass me when I try whistling the dog while we are in the woods.  It first disappeared completely back before Christmas.  Since then it has come back, but only partially.  Now I sound like a nine-year-old girl trying to emulate her big brother!

Oh well, such is life.

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Another picture of the the château in Châteaubriant, this time reflected in the windows of the bank opposite.