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Friday, January 8, 2016

The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine....a week late.

Alexander McCall Smith
Checked out from the library.
 I have spent years with Precious Ramotswe, 16 years in fact.  I became enamored with her when I devoured her early books while pregnant.  When Hiro was born, I found two books written about Precious as a girl solving her first mysteries of the missing cupcakes. 
The most recent book I finished is the latest installment of the series written by Alexander McCall Smith.  This is the book I should have brought to Florida.
There are so many wandering ideas, tangents of images from one thought to the next humorously being uttered at the wrong moments.  In this installment, Mma Ramotswe is coerced by her co-detective Mma Makutsi to take a much needed vacation.  But she finds it is very difficult to leave her business and relax when so many people need her.   Oh how I wish sometimes my life were like the slow thoughtful existence of a life in a magical Botswana.

Friday, January 1, 2016

New Year On Reading



The stack of New Yorker magazines that fill my going out of town suitcase is always daunting.  How can I possibly read over 10 weeks of this magazine during a 6 day vacation is math I never do in my head.  Sitting in a cold house in Queens, I delude myself that somehow, time goes by much slower in Florida, and that I will be able to plow through 2 magazines a day while lying on the beach.  And just in case I finish the 10 plus back issues, I also pack a novel.  A nice long one. This trip it is Ragtime by Doctorow. I am delusional.


The second I hit the warm sand, the last thing I want to do is read about depression era NYC.  So I flip through the New Yorkers.  But this is also not satisfying.  
In retirement communities like this one, everywhere you go, there are stacks of books for the taking.  Most often they are Danielle Steel for women, and Scott Turow for the men.  Occasionally there will be children's books for Hiro in these amassings.  In the elevator lobby of our rented condo complex, there is such a take-one-leave-one library.  There are three Harry Potters for Hiro none he needs to finish out the series.  
 
I pick out two books. Nick Hornby's monthly articles for a magazine called Believer and the collected letters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Only in the sand strewn lobby of a Florida condo will you find these two books keeping company next to Danielle Steele and Agatha Christie.
And here I make my third New Years Resolution.  (First being eat less meat, second- to wear more fun necklaces) To read and record what I read.  In the same format as Nick Horrnby, I will record in list form what I buy, check out and then what I read.  And give some thoughts on them.
Happy New Year!