Just About Books

I have spent a lot of time with my books shelves this week. I have to admit the first love in my life has always been books. My first memories are of sitting with my mother as she read Little Women at night waiting for my Dad to get home from work. My Great-Grandmother's favorite book was Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter. She told me she read it once a year.

My grand mother's favorite book was Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. I searched for it for years when I was young and then when I was about 13 or so I found it and I read it with such interest and it too became one of my favorites.

My Mom's favorite books were things like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and of course Little Women and any thing written by Mary Stewart. 

I was going through my bookshelves and I have lots of old friends that have been on my book shelves that I have not visited in awhile. Always being lured by new authors and new books. I decided that since this year, I won't have time to visit the library as in the past this might be a good year to just visit my own book shelves. To once again take the time to visit the books that have shaped my life.

My first book that I read for January was North and South by Elisabeth Gaskill. It is nothing like the movie and I love the movie. They did some updating for the movie. The story in the book is very sweet and though very sad, it is a interesting way to look at how authors in the 19th Century viewed life. Since Elisabeth Gaskill wrote for Charles Dickens I thought she was a good one to read as I am still reading Bleak House. I never can just read one book at a time. I work the best with three going on in my head.

I picked up Christy yesterday off my shelf by Catherine Marshall. As I started reading it I was drawn in and I think what I love about Christy is the first time I read it I was about 12 years old. My Mom had died, my Dad had remarried. I had went from being the oldest of three to the second of six. My Dad got the bright idea that to make this disjointed, miserable bunch of people into a family would be to take a cross county road trip. He borrowed his sisters station wagon and away we went. We took the famous Route 66 and we stopped at every gift shop, every rattlesnake pit you name it. We even made it into some backwoods place where Dad tried to find a place to buy Moonshine. We had lots of adventures on that trip. Lots of adventures.

Our car was loaded down with bows and arrows, tomahawks, Indian headdresses. Even a set of longhorn horns. In one of those gift shops I was walking around looking and there on a revolving, metal book rack was the book Christy in paperback. I picked it up and read the back. I went to the counter and bought it and walked out to the car and got in and began reading a book that would change my life.

It put so many things into perspective, while my life was different from most people's at that time, in Christy that book gave me hope, it showed me how that no matter what circumstances you might find yourself, you can always change it. To always be looking around you at beauty that is all around if you just train yourself to see it. So many of the phrases and words in that book were words I heard all of my life. Catherine Marshall wrote a book that fed my soul.

When I read it for the first time, Christy was 19 and she seemed so old, then the next time I read it, I was closer but she was still older. This time when I started reading it I am older now than my favorite character Alice Henderson. When I was having babies I loved Fairlight Spencer. I love books that  each time I read it I am in a different place and the different people can speak to a different me.

So hopefully this year, I can introduce you to some of my old friends. When my daughter Em's was about 15 I decided that that year we were going to visit all of my friends together. So I made a list and for one year, I would read out loud to her in the afternoon we would share books together. She still says the worst trick I played on her was the chapter in Anne of Green Gables called,
"The Reaper Whose Name is Death."  I didn't tell her maybe I should have warned her, but I think a really good writer is someone who can write and you can still feel and remember that place you read a certain passage in a book.

I love reading and I just don't want to get so busy that I forget to take  time to enjoy the beauty of the written word.

Have a wonderful weekend, thanks for stopping by today, for sharing in my love of books.

~Kim~