Rich Man, Poor Man by IRWIN SHAW

 

What can I say ... this book was almost falling apart in my hands as I was reading it. I had to keep it together with a blue rubber band that came off a bunch of asparagus.

 

That tidbit aside, a friend of mine handed this book over to me across a restaurant table full of other High School friends meeting for our monthly get together to keep the bond alive. I told him I had never read it. Surprised and shocked he told me that he picks one up every now and then just so he can hand them out. Of course he got this one for ten cents or something. It should have come with some Elmer's Glue or a warning when he bought it. May disintegrate on contact. But it was fun seeing if I could hold on to it in bed as I was reading it before hopefully falling asleep. Sometimes I would just have to amputate a few pages from the whole and hold that sparse section up before my eyes because it was going to inevitably fall apart anyway and possibly fall on my face.

 

On  the yellowed or should I say browned page after the title page it was revealed that this book was published a Kabillion times in 1976. I bet Dell Publishing Co., Inc. loved Irwin to pieces. I don't suppose that 'portions of this book appeared in Playboy in a slightly different form' hindered its sale.

 

In tiny print, it took me awhile to read through this book and it certainly kept my attention if I could pull myself away from Candy Crush. This novel took you through the lives of the Jordache family who were poor in a small town. Three siblings. Who ends up rich and who ends up poor and do any of them end up happy? That's for you to find out when you pick this book up. Hopefully your copy will stay tactfully together without danger of crumbling in your hands as you hold it as gingerly as a newborn baby afraid of breaking it.

 

I know everyone out there has already read this one and you are probably saying, "What? You just did!"

 

Yea, I just did.

Rose's Garden by Carrie Brown



Wow! This book really catches the feelings of someone who has just lost their loved one after years and years of marriage, not to mention knowing the other person since childhood.

This book was found at Goodwill. Yes! Once again my Goodwill has provided an excellent read. I really liked the cover with the beautiful bird and I suppose you could say it called to me, "Pick me!" So I did along with some other books which I am sure will appear in this blog of mine as soon as I read them. Lucky you!

The bird on the cover made me feel peaceful but that is not the case with the main character in this book who finds himself without his beloved wife and friend of a lifetime. Did he just see her in the garden? Smell her in the room? Will see appear as an angel? She's gone. How does one go on?

Conrad faces many questions and doubts in his mind as he tries to go on from day to day. What day is it anyway? Does it matter? Yet those in his small town remind him of the day, what is going on and how his troubled wife helped them. How she may have changed their lives. He had no idea. Was his life changed too? That would be 'yes'. But how is his life changed now?

And then you begin to imagine what it will be like for you. Will it be as heart wrenching? Will you be able to cope? What will life be like for you afterwards in the silence of the spaces that are now empty but were filled only days, weeks, or months ago?

Why does life seem to have to seep out of one's existence drop by drop and end so alone?

It doesn't seem fair.

THE SPINSTER SISTERS by Stacey Ballis

Another one I picked off the shelves at my local Goodwill. Why did I pick this one? Take a look at the cover. Looks like fun plus I liked the title. Spinster sisters? Questions began to enter my mind. Why are they spinsters? How old are they? Really old? Or what? And if they are old then why did they never get married?

My curiosity made me want to find out. It didn't matter to me that it was "seen on Rachel Ray". I just thought it would be a good read. And it was.
It kept me entertained over a rainy few days and some quiet nights when I was full of the Olympics and just didn't feel like skiing down a fast and dangerous mountain nor moving a hockey puck over cold ice bundled up in ten layers of padding. Snooze.

So, am I going to tell you the answers to all the questions I had? No. Obviously. Duh. That's up to you to find out when you read this book by Stacey Ballis who also gives tidbits of advice on singlehood and how to deal with boy friends, your family and your sister. Basically life in general and you in particular.

In a nutshell?

Be honest and also spell it out what you need because no one has ESP. Well no one that you may know at any rate. Go with the notion that no one does and then you may be happier because you will get what you ask for and you wont get what you don't. It's that simple.

In other words, I CAN'T READ YOUR MIND! and no one can read yours and you can't read minds either. Can you?

Communication, communication, communication. (That word looks weird when spelled over and over as if it is a little engine that could trying to chug along a flat line. Come on, you can do it!)

As an after thought, since you can't read my mind, I really love going to the Goodwill. You never know what you'll find. There's a lot of Grisham and King and authors that are well known. I am trying to gravitate towards those that don't fall off my tongue as readily as Good Morning and Have A Nice Day. Trying to take the paths least trodden because sometimes they take me to very interesting places that have been spun out of interesting minds and imaginations.

It's fun. And I can't wait to tell you about the book I am reading now.



The Illustrated LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD by Flora Thompson

 

I just finished reading this lovely book. The best thing about it? Here's the story ...

 

Let me say that I love watching Lark Rise To Candleford every Sunday at 7 p.m. on channel 4. The show takes you back to a simpler but harder life where it really is all about the people you live around and family. About working, playing and suffering together. Everyone is in the same boat financially so you pull your resources together to make a community whole. So it's a feel good show and you want to live there if only for a short time. It's so popular that you probably know what it is all about and this book is the real life account by Laura (the name Flora gives herself in the book).

 

But the good part for me? It's my story behind the story.

 

I was reorganizing my bookshelves to make them neater. I handled every book to decide if I needed to keep it, give it to Goodwill or pass it on to someone I knew whom I thought may like it. How delighted I was when I grabbed this book from the shelf and saw the title. Lark Rise To Candleford!!! Really? I had no idea I had the book. It had been there like a jewel hidden among other jewels.

 

In our family we put our names inside our book covers, and also we sign the books with a little note if we give them to someone else. In this book was my handwriting with a note to my mother telling her I loved her. It had been given to her from me in January of 1985. That was right after I had my thyroid taken out. Cancer. Maybe I gave it to her in thanks for taking care of me and my two little children during the recovery process. I lost my voice for awhile because the surgeon had to pick up my vocal chords to get them out of the way in order to chop chop. I thought I was going to have to sound like a raspy, longtime smoker of 101 years old but fortunately it passed. I cannot hit the high notes anymore nor sing for long periods but I can speak. It's all good.

 

Below my 1985 note I had also written that my mother had given the book back to me in 2009. I know she had picked it up a few times because the paper cover was slightly torn and wrinkled. It made me think of her hands holding the book, turning the pages and her eyes reading the words. Maybe she thought about me when she read it.

 

I know I thought about her.

 

I love you Mom.  Forever.

SIMPLE GENIUS by David Baldacci

 

Can you tell I got this in a used bookstore for only 25 cents? Or was it 10 cents. Well at least I didn't have to worry about preserving its cover. I could do what I don't normally do which is bend the pages back around the binding or even fold down a corner if I felt like it. But I didn't. I always use a book marker.

 

That said ... this book was a page turner as is all of David Baldacci's novels. And you also learn something along the way. Make sure you read the additional pages at the back where he will let you know what's fact or fiction. But don't read it first. That's the warning given by the author, not me.

 

The two main characters, Sean and Michelle, have teamed up again. And they make a good team if they can just get their #+*^! together emotionally. Not necessarily Sean but Michelle has some buried issues from her childhood. Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away. Except there may be more buried treasures in this plot which may have to do with a place called Camp Peary but you didn't hear it from me. Does that sound like the military or the government is involved? You hit the nail on the head.

 

So get your spy on or your psych 101 refresher course out because you are going to need both to solve what is going on across the waters.

 

Simply put though, you may have to be a genius.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Howdy folks! It's been awhile I know since I wrote about a book I have read but there was Thanksgiving, then Christmas and after Christmas and things to do in January that didn't get done in December and then it had to go on the February list.

But here we are! Phew!!

So I have read this book (and others that I cannot remember at this time because I also cleaned out my book shelves since the last blog post). And this book is good and yet different. You will ask yourself, "Do people really live like this?" And I suppose the answer is, "Yes."  Maybe it's you.

At any rate, this family of three live very differently, think differently, have high powered, creative jobs but end up having the same problems us boring folk have. So what's the deal? How you cope with your problems and differences or rather accept each other's idiosyncracies? Maybe. I don't know.

But you will find out where Bernadette went and why. So the book does answer that one problem for you. The rest? You're on your own.



THE CITADEL by A.J.CRONIN

 

What a treat! My Dad stayed up almost all night recently finishing this book. He said he could not put it down. I told him that I'd love to read it so when I finished my recent book I let him know and he handed me this book and told me he wanted me to have it.

 

I was touched.

 

Why? Because this book belonged to my mother before she was married. It has her signature on the fly leaf in beautiful script before she grew older and lost her eyesight. Before it was my turn to read to her as she sat on the corner of the couch and listened and smiled.

 

When I opened the book and began to read it I realized that I had read it before. At some point in my life my mother had handed me this book and I imagined she must have told me that I would like it.

 

Both my mom and my dad were right. I did like it.

 

So I read it again but with a different mind frame. I read it thinking of both my mom and my dad. Of Dad sitting just weeks ago in his lounge chair with the light on over his head, reading in the wee hours of the morning, oblivious of time. Of my mother, young, before she was a Stewart, reading such a story that was published in 1938. If she read it that year then she would have been 20. She got married when she was 22, just like me.
 

I tried to imagine what she looked like with her wavy shoulder length hair and how she would have held the book in her hands absorbing each letter on the pages. She swallowed books like food for her soul.

 

I understand why my Dad liked this story because he always says that he likes to read about young people rising above their difficulties to success. Much like himself. I don't even know if you can find this one in the library or even on Amazon but I know I will treasure it and hope that my daughters will too one of these days when I may hand it over and say, "I think you'll like this book." Maybe they too will think of me as I am now sitting on the corner of my couch with the lamp on, blanket across my knees, a couple of cats asleep on my feet. Book in hand. Readers askew on my nose. I hope so.