Did I mention how our family are voracious readers? I hear from brothers and friends and blog-friends who delve into my blog sidebar of books read throughout the year and go by my ratings and acquire them - and usually enjoy them.
Daughter and Grandgirl are also of the "there's never enough books in the world for me" ilk.
But isn't it interesting what a young person can throw at you out of the blue. Something one has never thought about before.
The other night:
Grandgirl: Do you realize that the books one likes to read tells so much about one's character?
Me: Really? How come?
Grandgirl: Well the books you really like are usually about missing people and unsolved mysteries.
Me: So what does that tell you about me?
Grandgirl: Well, I'd say you'd be trying to make sense out of your life, like there would be missing pieces.
Me: Well, I'll be! And I even write about that kind of thing too.
Grandgirl: So what would be missing?
Me (thoughtful, astounded): Well, the mysteries in the paternal side of the family. My father wouldn't talk about it, and I've tried to string it together from the evidence of others.
Grandgirl: Well, there you go, right?
(PS-LOL- And my father would sing "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" just about every day.)
My taste is eclectic heavily leaning into spiritualism. What would that make me in your grand girl's eyes? For instance right now I am re -reading Alber Camus' The Myth Of Sysyphus and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning. I am reading the former because Frankl refers to that in the latter!
ReplyDeleteWould I be searching for Ultimate Meaning? I wonder!
She's an exceptionally perceptive lass, that one, WWW! :-)
ReplyDeleteYour book list for just this year astounds me! I'm an overly picky reader - maybe lazy would be a better description ;-) but when I get into a book I really do feel in tune with I'm very happy. Trouble is there are so few like that, for me.
I too have mysteries in my family tree (on both sides) which I've tried to unravel at Ancestry.com without much success. Most of the books I've truly enjoyed over the years have been sci-fi or speculative/ dystopian novels - mysteries about the future, one could say. So GG's theory works for me - kind of.
So you can have mysteries but no secrets? You keep them guessing.
ReplyDeleteMy lifelong penchant for southern tales of slavery speaks well to the trapped feeling I've felt my entire life.
ReplyDeleteHa!
xo
oh my ...makes me wonder what my recent obsession with the A Song of Ice and Fire series says about me, they are a little on the dark side. I think your granddaughter is great
ReplyDelete"Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you...."
ReplyDeleteOf course, Nelson Eddy was singing because he'd found Jeanette MacDonald, and he kept on singing because he found her again in, "Rose Marie", and yet again in "New Moon." Seven films in all, and then he went and married that Ann Franklin woman...stupid man!
(Can't you guess, he was my mother's favorite singer!)
I don't read many books these days. I'm far to busy enjoying the great outdoors. I always tended to go for authors rather than subject matter. If I found a good author I'd read everything they wrote. Of them all, my favorite over many years has been Robert James Waller (another RJ, you see). He wrote so much more than, "The Bridges of Madison County". Some of his essays still make me cry, even though I almost know them off by heart.
I suppose that makes me a rebel, a wanderer, and possibly a n'er-do-well, in the character stakes. But, being all those things also means - I am who I am and anything more doesn't bother.
Ramana:
ReplyDeleteI'd say you nailed it and all by yourself too!
Good man!
XO
WWW
T:
ReplyDeleteShe herself is into post-apocalytpic type books, a genre that doesn't appeal to me much but now and again we do share enthusiams and actually one of my latest reads kept her up till 4 this morning. An obvious unputdownable.
I was not surprised at your reading choices at all :)
XO
WWW
GM:
ReplyDeleteThe Da believed in the starched and blued lace curtains keeping out the nosies.
BUT, I've dug up most of them and feature them in a novel.
XO
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Orla:
ReplyDeleteYou need to free the chains that bind you!!
XO
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CC12:
ReplyDeleteI just wikied this series and whilst it would have great appeal for GG, it would have absolutely none for me - I'm just winding up the mystery "Broken Harbour" by Tana French, the 4th in her kinda-series.
Isn't it wonderful we are all so different?
XO
WWW
RJA:
ReplyDeleteThe Da was an immense Nelson Eddy fan and I actually loved those old films that featured Canada and the mounties with Nelson in charge (maybe that's why I came here rather than SA? - h'm).
I also am an author devotee and have read complete output of many -Taylor Caldwell's books got me thinking about the secret dark rooms that drive the wars and our 'democracy' for instance.
I like Waller and must now dig out his essays. Thanks.
XO
WWW
I am working my way through the stories of Roger Zelazny, no idea what that says about me other than a weird sense of black humour and a taste for fantasy.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid we had a bit of a family mystery, we think our father was having an affair with a family friend. This was a shared mystery, the kids of that friend and us used to regularly discuss and speculate about it. But they (the parents) played their cards close to their chests and in spite of watching them with a pack of eaglet eyes, we never knew for sure what was really going on. My parents are long gone and the family friend remarried and moved away but she has never reveealed to us or her own kids the truth of the matter. I think it tickles her fancy to keep us guessing.
Annie:
ReplyDeleteThere is so much unrevealed and we can speculate all we want. I don't know whether the secrets kept are better than secrets revealed. It seems that today the dirty laundry flies everywhere. Too much of it.
I love your family story.
XO
WWW
I do agree about books telling us so much about the owners' characters.
ReplyDeleteAs I age I find myself leaning towards the much older writers, Florida Scott-Maxwell, Diana Athill, May Sarton for example...all women who enjoyed their solitude.
I do love browsing down your book list though and you have my undying thanks for your "library", also your film reviews.
Oh, and I must mention Stephanie Barron's series of books Jane and the......" all as if written by Jane Austen as a sleuth, with the language, mores, fashions etc. of that time....brilliant.
ReplyDelete