TWOsday ~ two slumpers

I'm in a reading slump, and I don't know why.  No, this isn't a picture of me, but it's how my reading seems to be going lately.  I completed only one book in October and two short books in the first half of November.  Here's the novel I'm reading now ― sort of.

Marching to Zion ~ by Mary Glickman, 2013 fiction (Missouri)

In 1916, Mags Preacher arrives in the big city of St. Louis, fresh from the piney woods, hoping to learn the beauty trade.  Instead, she winds up with a job at Fishbein’s Funeral Home, run by an émigré who came to America to flee the pogroms of Russia.  Mags knows nothing about Jews except that they killed the Lord Jesus Christ, but by the time her boss saves her life during the race riots in East St. Louis, all her perceptions have changed.

Marching to Zion is the story of Mags and of Mr. Fishbein, but it’s also the story of Fishbein’s daughter, Minerva, a beautiful redhead with an air of danger about her, and Magnus Bailey, Fishbein’s charismatic business partner and Mags’s first friend in town.  When Magnus falls for Minerva’s willful spirit, he’ll learn just how dangerous she can be for a black man in America.

Slumper #1

Every time I pick up Marching to Zion, something soon diverts me.  First, it was the lyrics of the song, which are printed before Chapter 1 in the novel.

Marching to Zion

Come, we that love the Lord,

and let our joys be known,

Join in a song with sweet accord,

And thus surround the throne.

Chorus:  We're marching to Zion,

Beautiful, beautiful Zion;

We're marching upward to Zion;

The beautiful city of God.

I didn't read those words; I sang those words in my head.  Do you know the catchy tune?  I sang the words ... and ... it didn't work!  I tried again, and again I bogged down.  I tried all four verses, and still I couldn't get through the song.  Why?  Why not?  Finally, I had to get out of my chair and look up the song in an old hymnal I have, and that's when I discovered that lines three and four in each verse REPEAT.  The words didn't match the tune in my head because they repeated!

"Join in a song with sweet accord,

Join in a song with sweet accord,

And thus surround the throne,

And thus surround the throne."

By then, of course, I couldn't get the song out of my head enough to get into the story.  And I kept singing it for days.  Every time I tried to read the book, that song got stuck in my head again.  But that's not all that sidetracked me.

Slumper #2

Image from the W.E.B. du Bois Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

I noticed both "St. Louis" and "East St. Louis" mentioned in the book's description and wondered if the author had confused or conflated the two.  St. Louis is a city in Missouri, where I live, and East St. Louis is a city in Illinois.  I even looked it up to be sure I correctly understood that the race riots of 1917 took place across the Mississippi River.  Yes, the white mob surrounding the streetcar in the photo is in East St. Louis.  (And I still haven't gotten past the first few pages of the novel.)

And finally...

Let's define "slumper" as I'm using it.  An urban dictionary says it's "a person who is doing something that is lame, embarrassing, rude, annoying, or anything less than perfect."  No, I'm saying it's something that diverted me from reading, thus putting me in a reading slump.  Or is this all just an excuse?  Like writing this post rather than reading the book.  Hmmm.