Early Bird Catches No Blog

Day 118 of the “What are you reading, and why?” project, and Kim is reading Ladder of Years, by Anne Tyler, because 1) blogger is down and 2) her camera is lost, so she has to read! Presumably she hoped to upload pictures from her lost camera into her blog, etc.

I am hoping that 1) blogger is up again, since I am blogging now and 2) that MSN will keep working, as I only thought I was blogging now…and am/was not…

I couldn’t blog this morning because 1) I was swimming laps (pool opened for Early Bird Lap Swim!) and 2) blogger was down. I will have to get a new summer routine now that I swim in the morning when I used to be blogging. Maybe I will write the blog entries in my head, while swimming, and then come home and write them down. I have composed poems that way!

Of course 1) I have a good imagination and a gradually poorer memory, so it’s possible that I’ll think the blogs I swam are blogs I wrote… and/or 2) maybe I could get one of those fabulous computers that works underwater. Heh.

I love Anne Tyler. I remember reading a section of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in a magazine, offered as a short story, and then recognizing it when I read that chapter in the book. Loved The Amateur Marriage. Can’t tell you why.

Rebecca finished Strength in What Remains and had The Little Stranger and In a Sunburned Country waiting for her. Are these more books that followed her home?

Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder, is the amazing story of Deogratius of Burundi and his persistent hope in the face of terrible experiences and haunting memories.

The Little Stranger, a novel, by Sarah Waters, might seem to be lighter reading after Deo's story, but it is haunting, too, a ghost story, set in England in the aftermath of World War II.

But at least there should be some relief from humorist Bill Bryson as he recounts of the horrors of sharks, gigantic earthworms, and being baked alive in Australia in In a Sunburned Country.

And Kim is supposed to be reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, for a book group. She can read my copy, if she takes very, very good care of it, because I have finished it. Really good story. Revisited my childhood in a way, since I even spent 5 years of it in the South, with a woman helping with children and housework in our home, a woman I loved. She had come highly recommended by the county welfare agency, where my mom worked.

But wait a minute, Ladder of Years is about a middle-aged woman who runs away from home, husband, and kids. I've felt like that at times. I've actually 1) walked out the door and around the block when really miffed or 2) driven down the road and had a glass of wine with my mom, instead of moving to from Baltimore to Delaware, as Delia does in this novel, which now seems like something I had better read. Maybe, if I take really, really good care of it, I can borrow it from Kim.