No, not rest and relaxation, reading and research!

This morning I have begun analysing some of the qualitative information garnered as part of my research... the total number of respondents is copable (phew) and around half of them fit the 'brief' and/or have completed most or all questions.  Just from the demographics and descriptions of conditions people have, there are enough follow-up questions/avenues for someone else to do some really useful work.  Not really sure I will have the time to do justice to what I have gathered, but definitely at least one and possibly more, useful papers waiting to be written once I've played with all the data.  It is hard to explain how happy this makes me - it is a sign that I have pretty much emerged from chemo-brain (still some memory and concentration issues, but much less) and that overall I am around 90% back to where I was BC.  Just enjoying thinking and mulling and spotting links and patterns... things I used to take for granted and now cannot.  That's good news.  For me, anyway.

And reading novels.  The Cleaner of Chartres by Sally Vickers was recommended by Jim Gordon and by someone at church who had followed Jim's suggestion. It is a gentle and easy read, feel good without mush, and enough of a plot to maintain interest... and no overly tidy ending.  As Jim said in his post 'just read it'.  I am currently two-thirds of the way through Born Under a Million Shadows by Andrea Busfield a book that popped up in my Amazon recommendations because of other purchases.  It is a, thus far, gentle story of life in contemporary Afghanistan from the perspective of a muslim boy whose mother keeps house for a collective of westerners.  Thoughtful, and easy to read, like the better known works in this genre it gives a glimspe into another 'worldview' and so opens the way to reflecting on our own.  Next up will be Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, which sounds intriguing and explores questions that I think a lot of us sometimes ask!  Of course, having the concentration to sit and read is no longer a given, so I am delighting in the opportunity my sabbatical gives me to indulge my love of fiction AND to strengthen my concentration 'mucsles'.