The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Goodreads is a website where you can keep track of the books you've read, are reading, or intend to read, and also share in the book reading experiences of your friends and others. Each month they send a newsletter. Here is how their latest newsletter started out:

Dear John,

You started reading
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
857 days ago.

Update your progress.



Since you asked.

Dear Goodreads,

857 days ago I read the first couple of chapters, which were just fine, especially that section about the father and uncle being on the ‘I Love Lucy’ show, then the book got lost in a pile of old newspapers for a couple of weeks. By the time I found it, I’d already finished another book and was in the middle of yet another, so I set it on my To Read shelf for later.

A brief word about my To Read shelf: items that go onto the shelf seldom come off the shelf. I buy books I’m pretty sure I’ll never read. That’s not entirely true. At the time I’m certain I’ll get to all of them, just as I’m certain that one day I’ll finish cleaning out the garage, but sitting here now I can safely admit that the chances are slim. For the books that is; I still have hope for the garage.

One of my problems is that the library sells used book for 50 cents apiece, and I can’t help myself. Stay away from the library, you say? Clearly you’ve never met me. And even if I could, there are still Borders and the Learned Owl, and even WalMart for crying out loud. Books are everywhere. And many of them are on my To Read shelf, stacked in front of ‘The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.’

Flash forward several months. I decided to clean my shelves in preparation for house guests. I picked up ‘Mambo Kings’ and said, “There you are,” and set it next to my chair. That night I started it again, and again I enjoyed the part where the father and the uncle went on the ‘I Love Lucy’ show. Then my wife gave me ‘The Book Thief’ and I decided to read it first because it’s Young Adult and I’m in the process of writing a YA novel. So between the time I started ‘The Book Thief’ and the time that our house guest arrived, ‘Mambo Kings’ was once again relegated to the To Read shelf. Or so I thought.

Your email reminder, Goodreads, is oddly timed. Just the other day I found ‘Mambo Kings’ in the kitchen on a shelf with recipe books. I have no idea how it got there but I will offer this conjecture: I had it in my hand, intending to put it on the To Read shelf, but in my hand were also several other items I was cleaning off my chair-side table, like an old sports section, a dirty fork, and a list of things I was supposed to remember to buy three months ago. I began carrying these things to other rooms for proper disposition, and then I got a text from my son. I set down the book, the sports section, the fork and the list, and replied. Then I left everything on the kitchen table and got myself something to drink. Later that day my wife threw away the list, put the fork in the dishwasher, and stuffed the book onto the first shelf she could find because she didn’t feel like tracking me down to ask where it should go.

So now ‘The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love’ is once again on my To Read shelf, because my glasses prescription is sadly out of date and the extra effort needed to read makes me sleepy. I have an appointment with the optometrist but that’s not for a couple of weeks. In the mean time I’m just going to rent the movie.

Yours,
John Sharp