Summer Reading

"One benefit of summer was that each day 

we had more light to read by."

Jeannette Wall,  The Glass Castle

This morning in church I sat with a friend, a fellow teacher.  I ask her how her summer was going.  (We have a four week summer program the month of June, so we've actually only been out a week.)  She said she hasn't slowed down, and asked what I had been up to.  I answered with one word...reading.

There is nothing I enjoy more in the summer than sitting outside and reading.  Oh, I keep up with the day-to-day chores, but when those are accomplished, and no one is calling my name,  I am ready to grab a glass of iced tea, a book, and find a shady spot in the garden (my poor neglected garden) to read.

In April I wrote (gushed) about Anthony Doerr's, All the Light We Cannot See.  I began telling everyone who would listen about it in November.   I am probably repeating myself; it was the best book I read in 2014.

The jury is still out, but I may have read my best book of 2015.  The author?
Anthony Doerr is destined to become a favorite.

About Grace

"He called them dreams.  Not Auguries or visions exactly, or presentiments or premonitions.  Calling them dreams let him edge as close as he could to what they were:  sensations --experiences, even-that visited him as he slept and faded after he woke, only to reemerge in the minutes or hours or days to come."

Do you have premonitions?
 I do... sometimes.

Sometimes they come in dreams.
Sometimes I awake with a foreboding feeling something is about to go wrong.
   Sometimes the phone will ring and I know who is calling.
I think of them as accidents.  Accidents perhaps brought on by prior gathered information, but unsettling all the same.

David Winkler had premonitions.  He dreams his daughter drowns in his arms while trying to save her.  Believing he can alter the future he leaves, abandoning his wife and daughter during the predicted flood.   Doerr takes us on David's journey from Alaska to the Caribbean, where with little money he manages to live and survive with the help of strangers.  Strangers who are also refuges with little means.   After twenty five years of unanswered phone calls and returned letters he saves the money to return home to face the consequences of his leaving.

 Doerr hands us a beautifully layered novel reminding the reader, we do the best we can with the information handed to us.  At some point we must make peace with our choices, make amends to those we love and learn to forgive ourselves.

What is your favorite book this year?
Bring it with you...we can talk.
You are always welcome in the garden.

******

To everyone who commented on my last post and sent personal emails, thank you.  I am humbled by your thoughts and prayers.   You raised me up, and I am grateful.  Hugs!