Waiting for lunch.

To stop for lunch seemed like a good idea after a fairly busy morning ... so ... Kindle handy ... there was time to read a bit before the cod and new potatoes arrived.
"On Canaan's Side" by Sebastian Barry is the novel on the go at the moment ... and it creates a conflict.

I want to read it at great speed because it has drawn me in and it is hard to turn the pages quickly enough to see what happens next.

And ...

I want to read it so slowly that each phrase is savoured and enjoyed and maybe even memorized!

For example: writing about Hollandaise sauce ..... "... being spread like a yellow prayer on a plump cod steak - victoriously."

Or here: "The thing put away most carefully in a drawer can sometimes be the very thing beyond finding. It is beyond finding, right enough - but it is still there."

And speaking of a precious souvenir of a man's son killed in the war: "My father ... kept the volume against his chest, in one of the inner pockets of his uniform ...warming the pages in turn with the furnace of his own body."

He speaks of "treacle-heavy sorrow" and "a beautiful rinsed-looking boy"

I'm not far into the book but it is certainly one that will be kept and perhaps re-read.