The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - short story and movie

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

By James Thurber

An ineffectual dreamer or someone with a rich imagination enlivening his day? 

"We only live once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He poured another brandy and tossed it off.

The way I had heard people speak of this story, I thought it must be a novel. Then I received the book and found 32 pages with large type and double spacing.  I pasted it into Microsoft Word and found a word count of 2,083.  It reads so quickly, you wouldn’t even think it was that long.

Pssst… you can read it here -> The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber

The story opens with Mitty imagining that he is a Commander on a ship breaking through ice, only to be rudely awakened to his wife demanding he slow down because he’s driving too fast.

“You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.”

Walter drops his wife at her hair appointment and she admonishes him to buy some overshoes and wear his gloves.

As he drives past a hospital, Mitty is drawn into an operating room drama in his head. Parking the car doesn’t go so well in that frame of mind.

He manages the errands his wife sent him on then ends up sitting in chair, off on another adventure, where his wife finds him. They set out but she leaves him standing outside a store where he finds himself facing a firing squad.

I’ve heard it said that the average man lives one life but the man who reads lives many.  In this story, Walter is writing his own stories. The problem is that it interferes with living his own life.

No one can live all the things they thought about becoming as a kid. The sad part may be that he may not have gotten to do anything at all in his life.

The idea inspired a movie in 1947 starring Danny Kaye and this year a new movie starring Ben Stiller will come out on Christmas Day. It’s only loosely related to the book.  The short story portrays someone who dreams his way through life, making his boring everyday life more interesting. The movie seems to ask the question – what if Walter Mitty didn’t remain an ineffectual dreamer? What if he finally fulfilled his desire for action and adventure?

You can see the trailer here - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring Ben Stiller.

The movie, set to come out Christmas day, looks amazing. My husband and I are eager to see it. Read the story.  Then go see the movie and find out what someone imagined for Walter Mitty.  

In Search of Gentle Death by Richard N. Cote

In Search of Gentle Death

by Richard N. Cote

 

This is a profoundly difficult topic but one that has been brought to my attention several times this year so when I saw this book, I wanted to read it and share it with others. 

Who knows what death will bring?  Is there existence when the body dies?  Is the energy that holds this collection of atoms together simply absorbed back into the Universe or does the consciousness survive?  Are we reborn to this Earth or to another existence, another plane, altogether?  Some believe there is a heaven where we go to live on, much like we lived here, though under more peaceful circumstances, while others believe something is across the threshold but don’t know what. 

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;”

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Different beliefs give people differing views of whether they have a say in when their life ends.  This book contends that the choice, whatever it is and for whatever reason it is held, should be up to the individual. 

The history of the movement is portrayed through short biographies of the people involved, showing how and why they have come to this view. 

The Preface begins “Life has an expiration date.  That we cannot change.  Longevity, on the other hand, increases each year… Unfortunately, the same technology has also prolonged the time it takes us to die – and agonizing pain and loss of autonomy often come with protracted, lingering death.”

The first chapter of the book shares the story of the author’s friend and minister George Exoo and the book continues on with a chapter each devoted to different founders of the movement. 

This book is dense, with nearly 400 pages plus appendices.  It’s difficult to give you the flavor in a short review, but it is also very well written and easy to read.  There is a depth of information and food for thought. 

Whatever side of the debate you fall on, I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the topic.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

 

 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

by Neil Gaiman

 

I listened to Neil Gaiman read this book some weeks ago on audio CD and it was brilliant! The other day I received the hard copy so I could write this review and stared at it in shock.  This is a very small book, but it certainly didn’t seem that way when I listened to it.  (Okay, then I listened to it again.) It’s only 178 pages, probably somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words.

 

That seems particularly appropriate as we are in the midst of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where the goal is to write 50,000 words in one month. Here is an example of something of that length.  It makes me wonder how many words were in the first draft, whether it was longer and edited down or shorter and added to in the rewriting and editing phase. Yes, I’m still getting over my shock.  It does not read like such a small book.  It is very much a big book.

 

The story begins with the narrator returning to visit his childhood home on the day of a funeral.

 

“I had done my duty in the morning, spoken the words I was meant to speak, and I meant them as I spoke them…”

 

I don’t think the author ever directly tells us who the funeral is for. I surmised that it was for the father but we never really know for certain.

 

Then we move back into the main part of the story, a remembrance of things past, when the narrator was but a little boy of seven or so. The vocabulary is somewhat advanced for the age of the main protagonist but perhaps not for a bookish child, as we find out right off.

 

“… the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.”

 

When no other children arrive for the party, he goes upstairs to read his new set of Narnia books.

It is is not exactly what I would call a horror book though there are horrors, all the more sinister and horrible for how close to home they are. It reminds me most of the Madeleine L’Engle fantasy books I read in my middle school years, though a bit more adult. The good witches come in threes, just like the three witches in A Wind in the Door.

 

The setting is so well realized – the author never overdoes the details but each detail adds to the suburban/rural setting with a large yard and garden, perhaps a bit overgrown, goldenrod and heather growing where they please, and a small farm down the lane.

 

It’s the perfect tale for a cold fall day or a dark winter’s night. It’s a fairy tale and a bit of a horror story and all too real in places. When you get to the end, you might just find yourself going back and reading it again, like I did. 

 



Why We Write by Meredith Maran

 

 

 

I just picked up Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do by Meredith Maran and I've been enjoying the entries on the various authors tremendously. (I admit I've been skipping around instead of reading straight through.) 

Most writers have tried to answer the question at some point, either formally on a grant application or informally, of why they write.  Some will say there is a “right” answer but I believe it is a very personal answer, and in this book we hear those answers from 20 well-known authors. 

For authors, you may also glean some ideas from the portion about “how” they do what they do. Years ago, Terry McMillan picked up a job application for McDonald’s and fills it out for every single character in her books.  She goes further though. “I create a five-page profile for every one of my characters so I know everything about them: what size shoes they wear, if their hair is dyed, if they bounce checks, have allergies, what they hate about themselves, what they wish they could change, if they pay their bills on time.”

Now, maybe this isn’t completely necessary but I can sure see the benefit.  I’ve always been something of a “method” writer, getting inside the character and writing from the inside out.  I need to know whether my character would really do the things that I’m writing for them.  Will it ring true for the reader?  I figure if I really know my character, I can put them in a situation and I will know what they will do, how they think and how they will react.

I think it would be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about these particular writers or how writers work in general and there’s a good variety of authors – Isabel Allende, David Baldacci, Jennifer Egan, James Frey, Sue Grafton, Sara Gruen, Kathryn Harrison, Gish Jen, Sebastian Junger, Mary Karr, Michael Lewis, Armistead Maupin, Terry McMillan, Rick Moody, Walter Mosley, Susan Orlean, Ann Patchett, Jodi Picoult, Jane Smiley and Meg Wolitzer.

It’s a fascinating look and, potentially, a useful one.



Foreign Devil Girl in Hong Kong by Ruth Epp

Foreign Devil Girl in Hong Kong

By Ruth Epp

Ruth Epp knew she wanted to go to China from childhood.  She didn’t know exactly what sparked the call but it was there as long as she could remember.  Her chance came in 1959, at age 22, when an English missionary born and raised in China, Vera McGillivray, invited her to come out. 

At first she was simply excited, but she would be gone for five years and eventually she realized how much of her family life she would be missing, on the other side of the world for so long. 

I had never thought of all that would be happening in my family during the five years I expected to be away – weddings, babies, graduations, illnesses, maybe even deaths – and I would be too far away to know and share these things with them. I wouldn’t even have a phone!

Still, Ruth stayed true to her early dream and prepared herself for the journey.  There were certain things she couldn’t prepare for though, such as arriving a whole week ahead of schedule and having to find Vera with the help of the first engineer from her ship and a taxi driver who spoke very little English.

Ruth found her way and as she went into the village with Vera, she describes the experience as a homecoming, “I had the strangest feeling that I had come home and that I belonged in this place – a place whose name I didn’t even know how to pronounce.”

I was struck by the connection she drew between feeling embarrassed as a teen for not having much as the child of a preacher but now feeling embarrassed for having so much more than the people she was living among.

“The closer I got to my neighbors, the more I saw that though I couldn’t help very much with the problems that poverty caused, the love and life that came from Jesus could make a huge difference in their heart and spirit.  And I was here to help them find him – through talking about him, and by real friendship and acts of love and kindness when they needed it.”

Learning the language was certainly not easy, “The young guys at church who knew some English would hoot with laughter at my mistakes.  It was friendly laughter, and they were on my side, but I still hated to be laughed at.”

It takes some time for Ruth to learn not just the sounds and intonation of words but the cultural literacy.  One day she says thank you for a compliment and is laughed at for her “conceit.”  Miss Wong explained, “That’s not the way it is with us. If you go around thanking people for compliments, everyone will think you are proud and conceited.  You should always say that whatever they admired is no good, not pretty, etc.  Then they will know that you are humble and modest.”

This is an InspiringVoices book from Guideposts and the focus is her missionary work in Hong Kong but it never felt preachy to me.  This book is written from the perspective of her cultural experiences, living in a new country during a time when knowledge of other cultures was a little more limited than it is today.  It is a gentle and humorous read about a young girl experiencing a new culture for the first time, a thoroughly enjoyable read.

My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper by Gabrielle Reece with Karen Karbo

My Foot is Too big for the Glass Slipper: A guide to the less than perfect life

By Gabrielle Reece with Karen Karbo

When I picked up this book, the title caught me.  I started reading and it all sounded a little too wonderful.  I started to think maybe it was going to be like a reality TV show. Then I was struck by her sense of humor.

“We didn’t even make it to the fifth anniversary before our sexy fairy tale turned into one of those unwatchable Swedish domestic dramas that makes the audience want to throw themselves off the nearest bridge.”

For those who don’t know, Gabrielle Reece is a six-foot-three professional athlete and looking at pictures, you might think she is perfect but she candidly lets you know that she is a real person.

“My arms and legs are so long, sometimes it feels as if I have twice as many moving parts as the average woman... In a few minutes I’ll stand up from the chair I’m sitting in as I write this, and there’s no guarantee I won’t trip over my feet between the desk and the door.  It makes me anxious.”

The more I read, the more down-to-Earth it became with great advice for life.  There were many things I’ve learned too that we all need to be reminded of from time to time. 

“I took every slammed cupboard personally… His mood, the one that would make me feel unloved, would be long gone, but I’d still be feeling the sting of it, the injustice.  I’d still be experiencing his mood, long after he was out of it.”

I think that’s pretty normal for a lot of women, and maybe some men too.  She goes on to say that she would never say anything, that she would tread lightly instead of venting herself and getting it out and over.  Of course, after four years, she couldn’t take it anymore.  She filed for divorce.  He tried to talk her out of it but she was done.  Six months later he showed up to pick up his snowboard and she realized she’d made a mistake.

“Laird and I got back together.  For another year or two, we circled each other, unsure.  We were like survivors of some natural disaster, grateful to be alive, but dazed by the wreckage.  The foundation was cracked, the roof had leaks, the windows were smashed out.  Repairs always take longer – and cost more – than you might first imagine.”

They had a couple kids and hit another rough patch but made it through.  She quotes Anne Morrow Lindbergh - “When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.”

I remember reading an article some time back about how men tend to pull back then lean in cyclically in a relationship.  Paradoxically, women then want to lean in when men are pulling back.  It’s hard to just relax. 

“Nothing makes you superficially more happy than the first flushes of love, but in the ever after it’s all about dealing with your lover, with understanding what makes him tick, surviving his crappy moods, and working together, always, to preserve what you’ve got and nurture a deeper, more profound and grounded love into the future.  Happily schmappily.  I don’t think so.”

This book is like a very chatty and level-headed series of blog posts or essays, covering many of the topics that are important to women today as wives, mothers and human beings.  She covers pregnancy, having a baby and motherhood.  She’s an athlete so she devotes some time to talking about working out, the many benefits of exercise and starting/maintaining a fitness regimen.  She talks about the sisterhood of women and creating a supportive group, preferably inter-generational.

God bless her, I think she hits the nail on the head with food and dieting. 

“Don’t do it.  I don’t care if you’re eighty-seven pounds overweight.” 

I can now fully endorse this book.  She adheres to the principle of eating healthy but having the fun food on occasion too.

“When you put something in your mouth, always know why you’re doing it…  if you’re going to eat that triple fudge salty caramel brownie, really eat it.  Stop texting, give it your full attention, lick your fingers, sigh, and moan.  Enjoy the hell out of it.” 

I agree. 

There’s some things I’m not going to touch on here, because it’s just between us girls.  This is some thoroughly modern reading on what it takes to make a marriage work, parent and live a balanced life in this day and age.  I appreciated it.  I hope you will too.

Check out Gabrielle Reece’s blog at http://www.gabriellereece.com

River Inside the River by Gregory Orr

I’ve found another poet and fallen in love with his words.  “You didn’t know about Gregory Orr?” you ask in astonishment.  I hang my head.  No, I didn’t. 

It’s not all spun sugar and gossamer

p. 69

What’s in a poem?  Everything in life and the human heart including “deepest grief and even horror.”

The problem for me in talking about a collection of poems like this is that my brain feels like it has moved into images and feelings.  It’s difficult to convey.  I want to simply read you the poems I read and say, “See?  Isn’t that wonderful?”  Alas, I cannot in a blog so I will try to explain what I loved about this collection.

As with many collections of poetry, so much is conveyed in such a short volume, only 124 pages, and with only the utterly necessary words.  There are not even titles for the individual poems in the second and third sections, just titles for the three sections of the book and within the first section.  I have heard it said that musicians play notes but great musicians play the silence between the notes as well.  Here, there is lots of space and silence to help shape the poems.

In the section titled Eden and After, Orr reimagines Genesis, in poetic form.

To Choose

God planned a static planet

With plants that bore

No offspring - as if

Acts had no consequence.

p. 27

This created different layers of confusion for my mind.  Was it presumptuous or imaginative to put words in God’s mouth and thoughts in his head?  Does he even have or need those things?  Since God is not a human, is it anthropomorphizing him? 

Eve’s feelings on exploring the world she now inhabits are revealed in two poems –

To Go 

Who wouldn’t be alarmed

To see the tulip’s

Fleshy petals

Wilt and fall?

… How it was definitive,

Beyond recall. 

p. 32

To Say/To Save

As she spoke aloud

Each flower’s name

She felt her saying save

p. 46

I’ve been exploring the idea from Joseph Campbell that the infinite is here and now, that if each moment is being, has been and will always have been, then recognizing fixes it in memory and makes it infinite.  I felt like this last poem caught that idea.

The section titled The City of Poetry is the type of poetry I find more comfortable - more words,  images and thoughts, though still spare.

I read page 56 to 57 about the three main difficult passages in his life and how a book of Keats helped Orr get through the third.  I wondered if this was a personal recollection or a character he had created so I went searching and found the following article.  (Yes, he did kill his younger brother in a hunting accident when he was twelve and his mother did die two years later and he was abducted and imprisoned in rural Alabama during the sixties.)  You can read more about Gregory Orr’s poetry and life here -

THECAGED OWL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, POETRY AS SURVIVAL, AND THE BLESSING

Impermanence is celebrated in the section titled River Inside the River

Even the things that seem to stand still

Flow slowly into other forms.

p. 93

Comparing a cat to a love-sponge and a dog as a fountain of love seems so apt to me in the poem on page 99.  I love the fluidity of using he and she for the same character/person “the beloved.”  I find that fascinating and I wonder what he meant by it.  It makes me think of how I sometimes imagine God to be either/neither male or female.

And at last, he made me cry on page 111.

First, there was shatter.

Then, aftermath.

Only later and only slowly

We gathered words

Against our loss.

But last was not least,

Last was not least of these.

This book was a wonderful experience.  I hope you take it.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

When I was a teenager, I really enjoyed writing letters - long newsy letters with quotes from movies, television, books and songs, mostly to my grandmother and a few friends who lived some distance away.  The letters this story is told in are similar, though there are a number of short missives sent by cable or messenger because it is late 1940.  The problem is that the phones and phone lines are in disarray because of the war. 

Juliet becomes the toast of England after World War II when her humorous newspaper articles about life during the war, written under the nom de plume, Izzy Bickerstaff, are collected in a book and published.  Now she is looking for a new topic to write about. 

Dawsey Adams, from Guernsey Island, has come into possession of a Charles Lamb book that had once belonged to Juliet and still has her address in the front.  It isn’t easy to come by anything after the war and so Dawsey writes to Juliet asking for help in locating more Charles Lamb books, beginning a correspondence and friendship that will eventually lead Juliet to Guernsey Island. 

As Juliet and Dawsey correspond, the story of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and, by extension, the occupation of Guernsey by German soldiers during the war is revealed.  (Guernsey is an island in the English Channel, actually much closer to France than England.)  The titular literary society comes about one evening as an excuse for some islanders out after curfew, to keep the Germans from jailing or killing them. 

I actually listened to this book in the car, as I do many books, and the recording had the benefit of multiple voices - two men and three women.  I think it made the story go more quickly and brought the characters to life in a way that was a little bit lacking in the hard copy, though I don’t agree with the few detractors that say there was no variation among the voices of the characters.  There was, decidedly.  The literary crowd of Juliet, Sidney and Susan have a wider vocabulary and use more complex sentences.  Amelia Maughery is a little old fashioned while Dawsey is plain but straight forward and uses correct English.  Isola and Eben frequently do not use proper English. 

Take, for example, a paragraph from Amelia Maughery, very proper, “I realize that our name, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is an unusual one and could easily be subjected to ridicule.  Would you assure me you will not be tempted to do so?  The Society members are very dear to me, and I do not wish them to be perceived as objects of fun by your readers.”

Then, Isola Pribby writes to Juliet about the Brontes, “Their Pa was a selfish thing, wasn’t he?  He paid his girls no mind at all – always sitting in his study, yelling for his shawl.  He never rose up to wait on hisself, did he?  Just sat alone in his room while his daughters died like flies.”

 

This is a quiet story of a channel island during World War II.  People try to get by, stay out of trouble, make do with what they have and get on with life as best they can.  They even fall in love, but the war intrudes. 

Juliet does come across as young, privileged and an idealist, rather a Pollyanna, even though she has gone through World War II and also lost her parents at an early age.  She’s a pleasant enough character but I’m not sure it sounds right for what she’s been through.  On the other hand, that is perhaps what it was like.  You saw horrors and had to get on with life.  At one point, Dawsey asks her about a “Doodlebug” cartoon he had seen after the war and Juliet explains that Doodlebugs are what the Ministry of Information called Hitler’s V-1 rockets.

“They came in the daytime, and they came so fast there was not time for an air-raid siren or to take cover.  You could see them; they looked like slim, black, slanted pencils and made a dull, spastic sound above you... when their noise stopped, it meant there was only thirty seconds before it plummeted.  So, you listened for them.  Listened hard for the sound of their motors cutting out.  I did see a Doodlebug fall once.  I was quite some distance away when it hit, so I threw myself down in the gutter and cuddled up against the curb.  Some women, in the top story of a tall office building down the street, had gone to an open window to watch.  They were sucked out by the force of the blast.”

Her explanation is rather matter of fact but the simple facts hit hard when you understand.  There are moments about the occupation of Guernsey and the war in England that are hard to take and made me tear up, but they are mixed in so that it is not too hard to bear. 

Overall, it is a cheerful book, though the topic is serious.  I would recommend it and even more highly recommend the audio version, the cast reading the letters are tremendously entertaining.

Summer Reading 2 – Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

Summer Reading 2

Maybe This Time

by Jennifer Crusie

         

It’s been a long time since I was first introduced to Jennifer Crusie.  I remember  a friend being extremely enthusiastic about the latest Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer book.  I tried one and didn’t really care for it.  The collaboration just didn’t work for me.  (I tried their latest, Wild Ride, and it still doesn’t.)  However, if you’re looking for a quick, fun, romantic read then I highly recommend books written by Jennifer Crusie, on her own.

 

I remember reading Anyone But You several years ago - Nina Askew doesn’t think it would be appropriate for her to date the young ER doctor downstairs but her beagle/bassett mix, Fred, obviously does.  It was a fun, light, read.

 

I rediscovered Jennifer Crusie recently and devoured several of her books in just a week.  Trust Me On This has Dennie chasing the biggest story of her career while Alec is a Federal agent after a con artist.  It’s a case of mistaken identity and intentions that makes for anguish and laughter.

 

Bet Me was a delightful and incredibly funny, sweet and sexy book. Minerva Dobbs is a bit off beat but very practical.  Her logical choice for a boyfriend dumps her and a bet pairs her up, rather angrily at first, with Calvin Morrissey.  They part ways after dinner, intending not to see each other again, but something keeps drawing them back together.  I loved this one.

 

The most recent book I read was Maybe This Time.  I’ve always enjoyed ghost stories and this falls into that category as well as romance. 

 

Andie shows up at her ex-husband, North’s office, wanting nothing more than to hand back the alimony checks he has been sending every month for nearly ten years.  She never wanted the money and she’s ready to move on so she intends to cut her last ties with him.  She’s planning to get remarried.

 

North, much to his own surprise, asks for her help.  Two years ago he became the guardian to two children when his cousin died.  He left the children with their aunt but she has since died.  North has sent several Nannies but each one has come running home with her tail between her legs.  He offers Andie ten thousand a month to spend a few months with the kids, bring their education up to par and bring them home.  Andie won’t even have to contact him, they can communicate through his secretary.

 

Andie agrees to one month.  Ten thousand dollars would get her out of debt before she gets married.  She leaves, “before he could say or do anything else that made her forget she was done with him.”  Of course, it isn’t over until it’s over.

 

With so many books written by herself and several more with co-authors, it will take you a good little while to run out of reading material.  They are just plain fun.

Summer Reading - The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank

The Last Original Wife
By Dorothea Benton Frank

 

Dorothea Benton Frank has become one of my favorite authors for summer reading. She came to my attention over 10 years ago when my sister shared the first Lowcountry novel, Sullivan's Island. Part mystery, part Chick Lit, it introduced the author's main setting and theme – the Lowcountry of South Carolina and a woman in her prime facing a life changing circumstance of some kind. The woman typically heads home, to the Lowcountry, to find the emotional fortitude to face her situation.  The Lowcountry of South Carolina is also often reflected in the titles– Sullivan’s Island, Plantation, Isle of Palms, Pawley’s Island, and Folly Beach.

Leslie Anne Greene Carter is the main character of Frank's latest novel, The Last Original Wife. An unusual facet of this novel is that it's told in alternating chapters from Leslie and her husband, Wesley.  It is heavily weighted toward Leslie’s point of view but we also get Wesley's point of view and get to see how it changes over the course of the book.  Wesley may be "the bad guy" but he's not a totally bad guy and he grows over the course of the novel, just as Leslie does.  Unfortunately for the marriage, they are growing apart.

The novel starts out at the offices of a high priced therapist in Atlanta where a woman begs Leslie to sell her Leslie’s time with the therapist after finding her husband in bed with two of his daughter’s teenage friends.  Leslie tells her she can have the session if Leslie can have the name of the woman’s plastic surgeon and, by the way, divorce the bastard.  “Take all his money.  Every last nickel.  None of that divide by two bullshit.”  They exchange cards and the woman decides she doesn’t need the session after all.

Leslie and Wesley's own inciting incident is a vacation to Edinburgh, so Wesley can play golf, where Leslie ends up falling through an open man hole while taking pictures.  Wesley doesn’t notice until twenty minutes later when he gets back to the hotel with his friends.  Wesley blames Leslie for her accident and Leslie is angry at Wesley for leaving her alone in the hospital with his friend’s new young wife while he goes golfing. I suppose if falling in a manhole and breaking your teeth and arm as well as gaining numerous cuts and bruises while your husband walks on doesn't wake you up, then nothing will.

Leslie decides it's time to take an extended vacation down to see her brother, Harlan, in Charleston. There she reconnects with an old flame, and reads up on Josephine Pinckney, who owned the house where Leslie's brother lives. She is called home when Wesley is diagnosed with cancer and she agrees to go take care of him during his biopsy surgery. Wesley tries to convince her to come home permanently and the novel comes full circle to visit the therapist we saw in the beginning.

This novel is sort of like a gossip session with girlfriends that you don't have to feel guilty about because the characters only exist in the book. There's a lot going on. Light, but not too light, a perfect summer read. Enjoy!

A Young Girl's Favorite Books

I've noticed a lot of lists with books for girls on Pinterest lately and it got me thinking about my favorite books growing up.  This is just a quick list of some of my favorites when I was young.  

As I thought about the books I would want to include, I realized there were five main ways I found these stories.  They were either books we had at home, books at my grandmother's house, books teachers and librarians read to us at school, books I found in the school library, books I found in the public library or books I learned about because the families I babysat for had them and read them to the kids at bedtime.

Here's a few of my favorites - 

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward and Marjorie Flack -  This is one of my daughter’s current favorite books.  I gave it to her for Easter and she has wanted to read it regularly, insisting on it migrating from her bedroom to the downstairs and back up at night.  We had a copy when I was a child.  I always remembered it but couldn’t think of the title.  Then I worked with an amazing children’s librarian a decade ago and started describing it to her, or at least what I could remember.  She recognized it instantly and told me it was probably the best Easter book for children ever written.  It was surprisingly ahead of the times back in 1937.  The Country Bunny is a single mom with 21 children.  She always wanted to be an Easter Bunny but she had children and life got away from her.  Now her children are a little older and she has honed all the skills Grandfather Bunny is looking for in an Easter Bunny while raising her children. 

Bobbsey Twins in Rainbow Valley by Laura Lee Hope  – This was a little book that I found in my grandmother’s house and I loved reading it every time I was there.  The two sets of twins, Flossie and Freddie and Bert and Nan, go on vacation with their parents to Rainbow Valley.  Many mildly scary adventures befall them on their trip.  I think the adventure on vacation angle appealed to my mind because I was on vacation at my grandmother’s house.  I read once that kids are naturally fascinated with twins and I certainly was.

The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder – There’s something about reading a book while you’re sick that makes it more vivid and that’s how I read these books as a child.  They were wonderful, simple, stories.  I think my favorites were The Little House in the Big Woods, On the Banks of Plum Creek and By The Shores of Silver Lake or even The Long Winter.  Oh, I loved them all.  I was always avidly interested in history, partly because my grandmother lived in such an old house.  These stories often related to things I had seen at my grandmother's house, like old tools and cooking implements.  I can’t wait to share them with my daughter.

The Fire Cat – This was one of my favorite books when I was little.  We had a copy at home and I’ve never forgotten it.  I've seen it here in the library a number of times and just saw a new copy being added to the system.  Who wouldn't love a cat named Pickles?  It's a true adventure with a cat who has too much time on his paws.  Mrs. Goodkind adopts brings him into her home but before you know it he is up a tree and she has to call the fire department who save, adopt and redeem this troubled cat. 

 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - I think my recollections of this story could be a little bit mixed up with the movie at this point but I still remember the soft green of this paperback copy and the softness of the pages for some reason.  The story never got old for me.  Mary is an orphan after her parents die of Cholera in India.  She is frail and sickly but when she goes to stay with her uncle on the moor in England, the garden she finds helps her return to health even as she helps it.  There's another secret in the house that Mary brings to light as well.  I bought a big hardcover copy of this book some years ago, hoping I would have a child to share it with eventually.  My mother found it and read it just a few years ago and I think she enjoyed as much as I ever did. Who wouldn't like a little bit of Earth to call their own? And how much better if it's a secret garden with a hidden door in a high wall?  It's the magic of nature.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – Meg, Beth, Jo and Amy are being raised by their mother, Marmee, while their father is away as a chaplain during the Civil War.  Really, reading the summary of this book, one might not think it a book for a young girl, but it is a wholesome story and appropriate for any age that can read it, I think.  Perhaps because this book grew out of Alcott's own childhood, it seems to ring with truth.  There are some tremendously high ideals and philosophies shared in this lovely story, as when Marmee tells the girls, "Money is a needful and precious thing,--and, when well used, a noble thing,--but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace."  I also enjoyed Little Men and Jo’s Boys, but not like the first one.

Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - I don't remember when I first read one of the Chronicles of Narnia but I know that by the time I left grade school, I had bought my own little paperback boxed set of the books because I loved them so much.  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader take Lucy and Edmund back to Narnia with their unpleasant cousin, Eustace.  They end up on a ship with their old friend Caspian, now King and go on a voyage with him to find the seven lost lords of Narnia.  This isn't a simple or easy tale but a journey worth taking.  I've enjoyed all the other books in this series too.  The Silver Chair is the first book in the series that I read and the gloomy character of Puddleglum, the Marshwiggle, will always hold a special place in my heart.    

A Wind in the Door by Madeline L’Engle - This is actually book two in a series but it is my favorite, perhaps because I read it first.  Fall in New England is one of my favorite places and seasons, which makes the setting perfect in this book.  Meg is worried about her little brother, precocious Charles Wallace, and her fears are confirmed when it is revealed that there is a war of good and evil being waged in Charles Wallace's mitochondria.  She and her friend Calvin must travel into microscopic space to save Charles Wallace.  Really, the other two books, A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet are just as good but I think the budding romance in this one appealed to me as a young teen.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper – This is one that I re-read every few years.  I was introduced to this series, and in particular this book, because I was babysitting for a family who was reading a chapter every evening at bedtime.  On his 11th birthday, also Midwinter day, Will Stanton awakes to a rarity where he lives, it is snowing, heavily.  The silence that envelopes the countryside is eerily reflected in his own house as no one will awake.  Will goes to find out what is happening and learns that he is the last of the old ones, born to stop the dark from rising.  It is not only beautifully written and enthralling from the beginning.  I was hooked and the mother lent it to me when they were finished.  I eventually bought my own copy.  It is still one of my favorites and I re-read it periodically.  There is another book which comes first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, but you've no doubt noticed that I don't necessarily read a series in order.  I go for whatever is available. This is still my favorite in the series.

The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost by Phyllis A. Whitney – Like most teen girls, I was horse crazy. Of course, it didn’t help that I grew up on the same street where they held horse auctions every other Friday and I walked horses to cool them down after polo matches one year.  I spent years trying to find this book again because I didn't have the title quite right.  I finally ran across it and found out it was by none other than Phyllis Whitney.  This was the perfect story for a horse crazed teenager with a love of mysteries.  Janey goes to visit her Aunt Viv on summer vacation and sees a mysterious crimson ghost dog across the lake.  There's also a beautiful horse across the lake.  in order to ride the horse, she'll have to figure out the mystery surrounding the crimson ghost.  

Please feel free to add some of your favorites in the comments.  I always love to hear about books I missed and I’m looking forward to reading a lot of books with my own daughter.