Appreciate life as only a person nearing the end of theirs can

Hello all you wonderful people stuck in quarantine (if you're lucky) considered essential if you aren't. I'm taking this time to catch up on the pile of books that I've had available to read but have found one excuse or another to not pick up.

As a firm believer that you have to be in the right mindset for some books I picked up "The secret Diary of Hendrick Groen, 83 1/4 years old"... Can I say that I had no connection to this book a few months ago when I tried reading it. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why my Mom had liked it enough to recommend it to me. We don’t often read the same things so when she recommends a novel to me I read it. I could not get into it, instantly bored.

However when I picked this same novel up a couple of weeks ago, I found myself stuck in my tiny apartment watching too much television and feeling the depression start seeping in. Something incredible happened. I was instantly drawn into the book. I did not want to put it down, I spent much of the rest of the weekend cranky anytime I had to put the book down and do something.

Normally I don’t write about a book until I finish it, however I think everyone stuck in their houses should read this novel. To me it is the ultimate quarantine novel. Reading about an old folks home might sound boring. It’s not the petty squabbles. The adventures of the “Old but not dead club”. It makes me long to go outside to go on silly little adventures that no one else cares about. Yet at the same time it’s teaching me how incredibly grateful I should be for the life I have, for the youth I still have, for the many years of adventures I have yet to come. Grateful even for the view out my window.

If you have found a way to be bored in your home during this stressful time, I highly suggest seeing if your local library has a virtual copy of this novel to read. It is extraordinary and worth reading daily as a meditative exercise.

“The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 ¼ years old” by Hendrik Groen
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Secret_Diary_of_Hendrik_Groen/ypfUDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0