Let's Discuss Books

I have a little down time in between bus routes and so I'm getting some reading done. I'm ashamed to say it took me about six months to read a very entertaining book by Isabelle Allende called "Zorro". It was very good but I just didn't seem to sit and read much, and basically not at all during the summer. When I went in for jury duty a couple of weeks ago, I had just finished "Zorro" so took along the book "The Falls" by Joyce Carol Oates. WOW! what a great book. JCO is from the western New York area so many of her books take place in this area, with liberal use of artistic licenses moving towns to areas that suit her story a bit better. I just find it fun being able to picture the locations in her novels.

"The Falls" begins in the early 1950's and ends in the late 1970's. Her characters are always so complex, some lovable, some not so nice but even when you think some characters are completely nuts, you still care about them. This book includes the story of "Love Canal" and the ramifications of it, even if they didn't live there. The main thing I have learned is that JCO's writing isn't always happy. She will take twists and turns that make me sad and then I worry if it will be resolved in the end. Of course my favorite part of reading her is that Nicki reads her also and then we can discuss the book later. I'll be borrowing Nicki's copy of "Blonde" when I'm visiting next week. It's the story of Marilyn Monroe.

My favorite author is John Irving. I have read all his books, some of them three times. My favorites are "Hotel New Hampshire", "The World According to Garp" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Here are copies of them. I especially like the small hardback version of Garp because of the picture of JI on the cover.

I could go on for hours talking about Irving books. Let me just say that his characters are incredible. I fall in love with all of them, caring about them and sometimes having my heart broken when their lives fall apart. The main thing about JI is that no matter how tough things get in his stories, you can always see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how bad things get, they will get better. This is something I have had to accept in my life and I'm sure that what I have read in these books has taught me to look forward not backward.

Nicki says that sometimes she doesn't like to borrow my copies of JI's books because of all the highlighting I've done in them. She tries not to think about why a phrase moved me. I will admit, some of them are pretty painful. Heck, sometimes I reread a book and wonder myself where I was in my head when I highlighted something!

This is my shelf with most of my JI books. I started out with paperback and have added hardback books when I had the money.

Here is my "library" and part of my skunk collection. I love to own my books. I cannot bring myself to borrow books from the Library. I want to own them so I can take as much time or a little time reading as time allows. I also like to write in my books. When taking world literature from Dan Scanlon in high school, he taught me how to fill the margins with comments and to highlight phrases that struck me as important. When you read my JI books, you can tell how many times I have read them as I use a different color highlighter every time I read them. Each time I read them I get something different out of them because of where I am in my life.

JI's last book was called "Until I Find You" which has a main character of a church organist how has a full body suit of tattoos. I had always wanted to honor my love of JI with a tattoo based on his books. For years I struggled with what to get. When this book came out, I took one look at the cover and there it was! As with anything JI, I took this to mean that I'm still looking for myself as well as that special someone that I can have in my life that will love and understand me, accepting me for who I am and not trying to mold me into who they think I should be to suit their needs. When you come right down to it, that was something I had to work out for myself, accepting myself for who I am and loving myself. I think that I can honestly say that I'm finally getting to that point in my life. As I've said before "What a long strange journey it has been" phrased another way "WOW! What a ride it's been!"