Umberto Eco

The Christmas holiday is a wonderful time to appreciate a snowy day and great books like this one, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.

Philip Pullman

Sssshhhhh! Don't tell her....I'm giving my daughter, Molly, the His Dark Materials trilogy and am reading a guide to Philip Pullman's books, Discovering the Golden Compass. Hopefully, Molly will share with her mom after she opens them Christmas morning.

Gordon Parks

This book is a beautiful photo history by Gordon Parks. Our "One Book, One Community" read last spring was The Learning Tree, by G. Parks. Each year, our community enjoys a week of activities (book discussions, author readings, visiting author in the schools, etc.) around a particular book. What a delightful way to meet up with kindred spirits! This year, I was lucky enough to be hostess to our featured author, Ann Parr, who wrote a young adult biography of Gordon Parks...a man she had the fortune of meeting twice, in person, when she flew to New York to interview him. The name of Ann's delightful book is No Excuses.

What is the most unusual book you ever bought?

I rather obsess about reading books...books about books....about bookshops...about authors...When I happened upon Abebooks' website, I found an afternoon's distraction in their booksellers' profiles. The piece below, by the owner of Yankee Book & Art Gallery, deeply moved me.

"...the one that I found the most interesting was a book whose title I can't remember and was not particularly significant.
It was a religious book published in 1854 in Richmond, Virginia. What made it so unusual was the hand writing in the book. The hand writing was by a Union soldier who wrote "This book was captured while the battle raged. Taken from a dead confederate soldier's body. At this battle my best friend went down. If you should find this book on or about my body please return it to my mother (an address in Pennsylvania was given) and tell her that I died gallantly on the battlefield."

One of my own experiences many years ago was at an independent bookshop in Wichita, Eighth Day Books. Browsing through the shelves while sipping a cup of coffee (is there any other way to enjoy a bookstore? Books bring to mind coffee...coffee brings to mind books), my hand landed upon a book with a completely nondescript spine...What caught my attention, I'll never know. However, the title of the book was intriguing - Working in a Small Place: the making of a neurosurgeon. As I read the back cover where it described this surgeon's work with, I realized that this was exactly the type of information that a friend needed to pass along to her mother, who was suffering from excruciating facial pain known as "Tic Douloureux". I promptly paid for the book, drove to my friend's home, and presented her with it. She, in turn, gave it to her mother....who contacted the neurosurgeon...who set up a date for surgery. Within the month, she was flying across the country to have the operation - which was a complete success. I will never forget the awe I later felt at such a profound sense of intuition. Books have that sort of effect on me...alot.

Broken for You, by Stephanie Kallos

My book group's January read....

I relish stories such as this...an 'intergenerational set of characters' who seemingly meet by 'chance'. The story of Margaret and Wanda brings to mind the way in which I met my own dear friend, Mildred... Looking for my toddler son one early summer morning, I began to panic when he was neither upstairs nor downstairs. I ran through the neighborhood, fearing the worst. As I walked past the large, kitchen window of an elderly couple we had not yet met, I saw my precious little guy (minus his diaper)....perched, naked as a jaybird, in the center of their kitchen table! They were trying to figure out where he belonged ;-)...and that was the beginning of a two-decades long friendship.

Life Paint, and Passion