Beauty Trumps Bad Language

I'm fortunate to have a husband who enjoys having me read to him. Now that his eyesight is failing, it's fortunate for him, too; Many evenings we can be found with the television off and settled with a book for an hour or two. In good weather, we read nearly every night in our back yard. Two things will bring us to not finishing a book--it's boring with little usable information to redeem it, or it contains gratuitous bad language. I have no desire to clutter up my mind with ugliness that serves no purpose other than shock. Perhaps writers of such material believe it shows how in touch they are with reality. Rubbish!

On May Day tulips bloomed copiously across the back fence with forget-me-nots beginning to show their bright blue at the left and a spreading bright pink flower with a name I've forgotten peeking out at the right. The sight stirred Wendell to haul our patio furniture out of the shed. Will the evenings be warm enough for reading outdoors? Wendell's tastes in reading material are almost as wide as mine. We read widely--fiction, non-fiction, classics, religion, philosophy, western, mystery, adventure, crime, you name it. He sits still night after night while I plow through a light novel or one after one of Michner's thousand page books--recently finished Chesapeake followed by our seventh short, self-published book written by Tom McDevitt, a member of my Idaho Writer's League writing group.