Spring fling and book stuff

As you can see, I have some books. I think it was yesterday that DebR of Red Shoe Ramblings asked us to show our stuff-books that is!

Here are three shelves of many. Some of these are my very favorites that I would read again and again. I'm not organized like DebR who has all of her stuff by genre and author. I've got books everywhere-everywhere... Years ago there was a great bookstore in the town nearby and I would go there to see what they had on the used book isles. They often bought collections from the wealthier folks around who buy books for decoration. That was fun. I found a lot of really wonderful books by great authors for next to nothing and began a collection. Steinbeck, E.B. White, Brendan Gill, Dos Passos, Updike..and my collection of George Sand, Flaubert, the Bronte's, Proust, and the great American writers, William Carlos Williams, Faulkner, Fitzgerald etc. I wanted to experience what their writing was about. I thought if I liked it-it was a gift. If I didn't-nothing lost. I can't really say I disliked any of the ones I just mentioned. I have tried to pick up Dickens several times and just got sleepy reading him. I never get sleepy with a book that interests me. I will try again some day. To my everlasting joy I also found Isabel Allende and read everything she has written. "House of the Spirits" is my very favorite. I loved the "Stories of Eva Luna" as well. There is almost no greater writer and chronicler of the NY experience than Pete Hamill.

A friend of mine owned the bookstore in town and I worked a few hours there-got paid in books and discovered a passion for mystery and murder-Carl Hiaasen, Michael Connelly, and my great find in James Lee Burke. He wrote a book called "In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead" that I have given over and over to people just so they can know what it is to hear music when you read the written word. His books are not for the faint of heart. They are down and dirty southern murder mysteries but he can write like a poet and bring tears to your eyes with his description of a vanishing South and all of it's beauty as well as it's under belly. I've made a convert out of my BIL Bob and his friend Joe and a number of others. A movie was made a few years ago from his book called "Heaven's Prisoners" staring Alec Baldwin. It was O.K. but I had always had my heart set on Tommy Lee Jones as Dave Robicheaux. I still think it was written for him. It's a good movie and a departure roll for Terry Hatcher. Of course the book is better but it's interesting to see how the characters you have grown with come alive in film.

Well, that's my story for today- I've been waiting for Martha to pull up with the moving van and she hasn't shown again. That means I have to put on some cleanin' clothes. It has jumped right past spring here and gone to nearly summer in a day. The temps are heading for 65-70. That's time for ceiling fans and since I can't turn them on without dusting them first-off I go to the ladder and vacuum duty. All the windows are open and the birds are singing, mmmmmmmspring