A page-turner

On the day of our son’s second operation on July 19, in a moment of reckless abandon, I plonked down the green plus a 33% discount coupon for a hardback book at the Big Name bookstore. I refused to think about how many used books I could have bought for the same amount of money. I did not talk myself out of buying the book. I walked out of the store carrying the book.

My sister had told me about The Help some time ago and said I should read it. So I decided I would.

I was already reading another book at the time, so I read maybe 30 page and then put it on the shelf where it sat for several weeks while I slowly worked my way through the other book.

I used to spend several hours a day reading books, but that sort of fell by the wayside as June commenced and I somehow couldn’t settle my mind to concentrate on reading, so I read sporadically a few books here and there, but mostly I sat in front of the TV watching the slop being served up.

Until I came across this quote by Alice Walter...

I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.

I read the book over the weekend. And then I handed it off to my friend Judy on Monday, and when she finishes with it and gives it back, I will donate it to the library in the event it does not have a copy.

And then yesterday Judy handed me this book…

She said she thought I would really like this book. It is such an amazing thing when one meets a kindred spirit. I immediately recognized the name of this author. I belonged to a book-of-the-month club shortly after we moved here and one of the first selections I bought was the second book she had written.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about this woman and her book, which I had not touched for years and years except to move it to a new place in the bookshelf, and I found it and began thumbing through it and realized I was reading what now would be considered a “blog.” Back then, before the advent of the Internet and the creation of the blog, women who had interesting things to say about their lives wrote interesting letters to their families or, if they were lucky, they had a weekly column in the local newspaper. And sometimes these newspaper columns became books. Books filled with wonderful stories about every day life.

So tonight, I will exercise my option to turn the off the TV and I will read.