Free Entertainment

I read a lot and always have.  I suppose it's an escape mechanism.  In fact, I'm quite sure it is.  It was the only way I found privacy when I was a child growing up crammed in with four other people in what amounted to a three-room house until I was in the seventh grade when my Dad finally added two bedrooms and a bath to the house he had built for us.  There was a fourth room intended as a bedroom for my sister and me, but it never got finished and we slept, first on a pull-out couch in the living room, and then on a roll-away bed usually in the kitchen but sometimes the living room.(I'm not sure how we made the choice come to think of it, but we both think the roll-away bed resulted in our almost identical scoliosis).

I've read a lot since I moved into this cabin in the Rockies.  When I was working, I bought my books second hand, but that's no longer adequately thrifty.  Now my source is the very good and brand new community library in Nederland.  I read two to three books a week.  It's wonderful, free entertainment.

I think I mentioned in a previous blog a couple of books I had checked out.   I had just "discovered" Margaret Coel, having read her Blood Memory and checked out The Drowning Man.  I enjoyed both of those, so have checked out two others, Eye of the Wolf and The Girl with Braided Hair.  These are part of Ms. Coel's Wind River Mysteries in which Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden and Father John O'Malley work together to solve mysteries on a Wyoming reservation.  Ms. Coel is an historian and I find the history on which she bases her novels interesting and informative. 

In that blog I also mentioned that I had checked out Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra, called a "Rich, heady, many-layered...a magnificient tour de force...an extraordinary first novel," according to the Los Angeles Times Book Review.  I pride myself on finishing any book I start, but I just couldn't finish this one.  With no T.V., I go to bed early with the intention of reading, usually fall asleep with light and glasses on, then wake up and read myself back to sleep again, so really rely on having a good book available.  But, when I was trying to read Red Earth and Pouring Rain, I would wake up filled with dread knowing this was the only book available.  Sorry, Mr. Chandra.  It was just too fanciful for me.  When the monkey got shot and woke up realizing he'd been reincarnated and had been a human being in his previous life who could type and started communicating with the people in the household where he was recuperating by doing so and then some gods got involved and he was forced to start telling stories, a la Scheherazade, but by typing, I just spaced out.  Now, really.  If I had come to you with this story proposal would you have jumped at it?  So I did not agree with the L.A. Times review and returned it unfinished. 

On this last trip to the library, I also checked out Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth.  I have always been amused by Oscar Wilde's wit: (“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”  “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”  www.goodreads.com), so thought I would like this novel in which he, along with friends Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Sherard, attempt to solve the murder of young Billy Wood.  I'm on page 243 and finding it worth reading.  It also got a recommendation from Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which I loved.  Mr. Smith does the best job of writing from a woman's perspective of any male author I've read.

I've saved the best for last, I'm reading another "free" book that I bought with some of what was left from the Amazon gift certificate that my friend Cindy gave me, and I highly recommend it.  Now, I somehow tested into an honors economics class when I was a freshman at the University of Missouri, but have never found anything related to economics or finance an easy subject.  However, I read about this book, Aftershock:  Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown Revised and Updated, on line and decided I'd order it, and have been spellbound all afternoon.  I've only had to reread a couple of passages twice to get it!  These two brothers, David and Robert Widemer, have teamed up with Cindy Spitzer, who has collaborated on books such as Chicken Soup for the Soul, I assume so people like me can understand what they're trying to communicate.  David has the Ph.D. and Robert an MBA, both having attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Apparently in an earlier book, America's Bubble Economy, they predicted the housing bubble bust long before it happened.  I'm not sure why I'm so interested, since I have absolutely no finances to protect.  Maybe it's like watching an accident happen...to someone else.  I'm on page 75 and I can tell you that I'll probably finish this before I finish the Oscar Wilde novel or start the two Margaret Coel books.  Really fascinating reading.  What are you reading these days?  Teddee