Reading

 A few years ago my friend and I were on a hitch of reading novels set around book stores. I'd read one and recommend and  then she'd read another and do the same.  The internet played its part. We were hooked on bookstore stories.

I might be on another ride: novels written in letters. Oh, I've read a few and enjoyed them, having them come to me singularly, the first being, perhaps, Daddy-Long-Legs and one of just a few years ago, although written in 1978, A Woman of Independent Means. This time, though, it'll be through the direction of the algorithms. 

Who knows where I got The Correspondent from (I think I need to start annotating that), but I loved it. Starting off slow and light, a woman in her seventies writes to any and all, famous or family, neighbors or old friends, giving opinions, asking questions, gifting praise. As the story goes on, we learn of her family, work, and life, adding layers to who she was and is. We see life as it was and is and even as it might be. And ultimately, we see the courage it takes to live a life. 

Then, looking to see if the author, Virginia Evans, had written other novels, another great way for me to find more wonderful books to read,* my latest read was suggested.  I'm only a third of the way into Letters from Skye, but I am thoroughly enjoying the tale. Told in letters penned before both WWI and WWII, it's a love story while painting a portrait of life then and lives lived when letters were still the norm. 

The funny thing is it's taking me back to my mother. When I was a freshman, I would call home each Sunday night, the gist of which is forgotten now. The calls were a check-in, a way to connect and for my mother to hear my voice - a voice, I'm sure, that conveyed my homesickness. I'm not so sure how much consolation I got from those calls. My mother knew, though, that the connection gave me the time I needed to settle and to find the outside world not so much a foreign and fearful place but a place where I could begin to grow. (I was also told by her that I could only come home every other weekend - another directive which hurt then but later became clear to me a necessary step to my adjusting.)

It is my mother's twice or three times a week handwritten letters to me about nothing, really, just the mundane minutes of her days, that I remember most clearly. She was giving me her time, her love and most importantly, a reminder that home would always be there without asking much in return. Oh, I'd write back but now can't fathom what I wrote about. My mom wasn't a 'best friend' mom. I didn't tell her secrets or worries. Who knows what I wrote. Maybe it was the same to her that Mom gave me. Love comes in many forms, and my mom's love was there in every letter she wrote.

How I digress! Reading does that, though, doesn't it? It takes us on voyages to new places and times, gives us ideas to think on and grow into, and yes, it can take us right back to ourselves. If we're lucky - and I am - it connects us to our own wonderfully full lives. 

Remembering

*My latest example of one book leading to another is Small Mercies. Unlike the two I'm writing of today, it is a serious look at life in 70s Boston during the upheaval of desegregation of the schools. Knowing little and coming away with so much, I'd call it a necessary book for growth and understanding.  From this book I now have a whole series to read. Set in Boston and in much the same gritty style of Small Mercies, it is another in the genre of private eye/sidekick books. Totally enjoyable.