I spent some time with an old friend and he relayed the story of coaching his girlfriend 's teenage son about reading "big" books.

The boy said he couldn't possibly read the large tomes assigned in school.

My friend explained how he could break it down, a little at a time and of coarse he could read a large book.

The best books are "big" and if you can read you can read a big book.

I was hearing this.. as I have not read a book in over three years.

I have been in pain for a decade but at a level these last years where I cannot concentrate more than a few minutes.

I had given up.  Reading only Twitter and short Face Book posts for news and inspiration.  No books. No more Harper's, Economist, medical texts, nothing save the occasional poem.
Thank goodness for the forwarded Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Rumi and Garrison Keillor's anthology of good poems or my brain would have dried up completely.  Even an only weekly life support poem.

But I heard my friend.  I am going to read a book.  Even if I have to take a lot of drugs to do it.