The Books of the Road Trip

Since I still have not caught up from our Alaska trip and all of the magazines that collected over the summer, I brought all of them plus four books to read.  I knew the scenery would not be nearly as appealing as Alaska was and I trusted that I would be able to read more.  And that is the truth!

So far I have whittled away a number of the magazines, though I have more to go.  But my greatest achievement is that I have read three books and am on the fourth.  That is a record for me!

The first one, a book club book, is Sum It Up, by Pat Summitt.  This is a well-told autobiography that documents her life, all while describing the Alzheimer's that forced her to quit coaching.  If you like basketball, if you wonder how Pat Summitt did what she did, if you want to experience the beginning stages of Alzheimer's and how it looks, this is the book for you.  I could not put it down!

The second book I read was the book about Willard Garvey.  If you knew him, you should read it.  It gives great insight into a very complex man.  I thought I knew Willard fairly well, but it is obvious I did not.  It was well worth the read!

Then I read The Red Tent.  At least several times a year, during book club discussions, this book would come up.  Somehow it would relate to something we had read, so I decided I needed to read it.  I purchased it for Di for Christmas, and then after she read it, I took it.  What an amazing read!  The research that went into a book like this must have taken hours and hours.  And who knows if she got it right?  But her description of the life of a woman in that time certainly seems plausible.  I loved the way the women looked forward to their days in the red tent - whereas women of today look at those days as a true inconvenience.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, despite the pain that parts of bring to the reader.

My last book, The Wives of Los Alamos, is a very quick read.  I am not through with it, but I have enjoyed it.  Having read 109 East Palace first has made this story more real and more understandable. And since our book club had just read The Girls of the Atomic City, I found the experiences in both books to be similar.  Life during the war years was difficult, and these books give a glimpse into the lives of many different people involved in the war.

So what is next?  Well, we have our book club book, and then I want to read Walking the Bible.  But before that gets read, Don and I both agree we have to read A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.  we just heard about it at the NFH Convention, and it sounds like a must read.  We will see how long it takes me to get to it!