It is going to be a great weekend for reading!
After my whining about summer's refusal to leave, our days have become milder. We can actually feel Autumn trying to push through. To be honest we often go straight from summer to winter, and winter to summer; when the temps drop below 80 two days in a row, we don long sleeves and boots and celebrate our Autumn.
This morning it is overcast and a cool front will be passing through, possibly bringing in some much needed rain. This my friends is
the perfect formula for a reading weekend.
the perfect formula for a reading weekend.
I finished Before We Were Yours last night. I may have a stack of unread books waiting to be opened and loved, but for some reason when I finish a book, I feel the need to replace it with something new, or new to me (I love previously loved books). Being too late to run out to the bookstore I began searching for something to download. This may be considered an addiction...
I will not commit.
I will not commit.
Perhaps it was finishing a book about the strong ties of family and what they bring to our lives long after they are gone, while looking for my weekend read I began thinking about who ignited my love of reading and lead me down this path of bibliophilia. And, of course, the train I jumped on took me to my sweet mother.
I cannot remember waking up and not finding my mother sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a book. While Daddy watched his favorite sports event or television show, mother sat next to him reading. Sundays, after Church and dinner, we knew we could find Mother, weather permitting, sitting on the porch with her book and a glass of iced tea (hmmm, sound familiar?)
Living in rural Louisiana we didn't have bookstores, instead she joined book clubs and visited the Library. She was always willing to take me to the library, and yes, I had my own book club subscription before I could read. I still remember the joy of getting a box of books delivered to my front door each month. She introduced me to some of my favorite characters... Nancy Drew, Francie Nolan, Scarlet O'hare and so many more. Mother read almost everything I read, reviewed and edited my book reports and was quick to give her opinion on whether it was an appropriate read for someone my age.
I have almost lived half my life without my mother. There aren't many days I don't think of her, miss her, especially when November, her birth month, draws near. I wish we could still share and talk about books. I know she would love to edit Living Life.
Did someone ignite your love of reading or was it a book that flipped the switch?
Share!
****
"Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much me may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance with the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn't suit the moment"
I cannot remember waking up and not finding my mother sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a book. While Daddy watched his favorite sports event or television show, mother sat next to him reading. Sundays, after Church and dinner, we knew we could find Mother, weather permitting, sitting on the porch with her book and a glass of iced tea (hmmm, sound familiar?)
Living in rural Louisiana we didn't have bookstores, instead she joined book clubs and visited the Library. She was always willing to take me to the library, and yes, I had my own book club subscription before I could read. I still remember the joy of getting a box of books delivered to my front door each month. She introduced me to some of my favorite characters... Nancy Drew, Francie Nolan, Scarlet O'hare and so many more. Mother read almost everything I read, reviewed and edited my book reports and was quick to give her opinion on whether it was an appropriate read for someone my age.
I have almost lived half my life without my mother. There aren't many days I don't think of her, miss her, especially when November, her birth month, draws near. I wish we could still share and talk about books. I know she would love to edit Living Life.
Did someone ignite your love of reading or was it a book that flipped the switch?
Share!
****
"Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much me may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance with the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn't suit the moment"
Before We Were Yours begins, 1939, on a shanty boat tied up on the edge of the Mississippi River, near Memphis, Tennessee. Four children are left alone when their father is forced to take his wife to a nearby hospital. With a storm coming the boat is boarded by strangers and the children are taken.
Using the real life horrors of the Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage as a backdrop we follow the Foss children through neglect, abuse and separation. Secrets are uncovered and lives changed when, two generations later, May Crandall mistakes Avery Stafford, daughter and granddaughter of a South Carolina Senator, for her sister. After seeing a photograph in May's room, Avery begins investigating her family's connection to the orphanage and to May. What she uncovers could possibly give her father's political foes ammunition to unseat him in the next election. We are reminded, no matter how or how long we are separated from family we are tied together by some invisible thread.
Before We Were Yours, is an well researched enjoyable easy read. Because this fictional story is told using memories of actual survivors of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, and the reign of the notorious Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis adoption firm, I was pulled in and continued to turn the page. It is unbelievable this could have continued for 20 years.
It is a good read!
Happy reading....
Using the real life horrors of the Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage as a backdrop we follow the Foss children through neglect, abuse and separation. Secrets are uncovered and lives changed when, two generations later, May Crandall mistakes Avery Stafford, daughter and granddaughter of a South Carolina Senator, for her sister. After seeing a photograph in May's room, Avery begins investigating her family's connection to the orphanage and to May. What she uncovers could possibly give her father's political foes ammunition to unseat him in the next election. We are reminded, no matter how or how long we are separated from family we are tied together by some invisible thread.
Before We Were Yours, is an well researched enjoyable easy read. Because this fictional story is told using memories of actual survivors of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, and the reign of the notorious Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis adoption firm, I was pulled in and continued to turn the page. It is unbelievable this could have continued for 20 years.
It is a good read!
Happy reading....
Hmmm . . . you have me thinking.
ReplyDeleteI remember being read to at bedtime . . .
Ferdinand the Bull just popped into view . . .
A favorite.
I remember my dad reading to me . . .
My mom too . . . but more my dad at bedtime . . .
Then the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Little Women . . .
And I really can’t remember not reading.
Library visits were often in junior and high school days.
Now . . . I go in spells . . .
Non stop for weeks, then I go through these dessert times . . .
Like now.
I love it when someone stirs my memories . . .
Thank you.
Sounds like a great read for our book club. One that I would certainly enjoy. I always wonder where I got my love of reading from. My parents are not really readers, I don't remember any of my grandparents reading. But I loved going to the library as a kid, and Nancy Drew mysteries, my mother had the whole set that are now mine.
ReplyDeleteDear Bonnie I love a rainy weekend and time to curl up with a good book. My Mom too was the one who encouraged me to read. So glad she did. Have a great week. Hugs!
ReplyDeleteI will have to look for that one.
ReplyDeleteIt was my father who ignited my love of reading. I don't remember a time when he wasn't to be found with a book on his lap. Other kids had sporty dads but I had a reader.....thank heavens. We still read and discuss. He is in his 90th decade and grateful for his good eyes.
The nicest gift I ever received was from my youngest sister, a writer, who inscribed her NYT best seller to me with the words 'to H________ who gave me the gift of reading'.
Now that made me cry.
I am going to go back and follow. I haven't done that with a new-to-me blog in a very long time.