Literary Endeavors

I've posted a new Blog friend at the side. I hope you enjoy him. I love his FORWARD, which appears at the bottom of his archive list. He makes a great case for reading and writing. Some of you may recognize him. Please don't reveal his true identity. I believe his nom de plume is appropriate for his fledgling blogger career. We can all say we know who he really is when he's rich and famous and we expect him to pay the tab at the bar.

Speaking of writing, I have a short story about a Christmas present.

Our family values reading and we give books to one another in quantity, and with thoughtfulness and care for the genre each individual prefers.

My sons know that there are certain authors (Nevada Barr, Sue Grafton, Carolyn Hart, P.D. James, Peter Tremayne, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Len Deighton, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, etc. . . .) and certain themes/series (british murder mystery, capable female detective, historical mystery, epic fantasy, spy thriller, Arthurian legend, etc. . .) that capture all of my attention at bed time and whenever else I can carve out a few minutes to read. I try to provide them with my latest desires before Christmas and my birthday, refraining from making purchases myself. I have finally learned to try out a new author at the library first, before purchasing the enticing hardbound volumes at Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Joren gave me a book this year titled Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell. I have never read this author but it looked like a good read. However, I was instantly aware that it was the most recent installment of a long series about an FBI Coroner . I'm one of those folks who prefers to begin a series at the beginning. Granted, a skilled author gets you up to speed so that each book stands alone, but my personality profile leans heavily toward linear events. So I kept reading other series, and I collected books from the library, and I decided to wait until my birthday before I go off and purchase the latest P.D. James Adam Dalgliesh book, and Joren kept asking, "Did you read Scarpetta yet?"

Guiltily I responded that I had not and gave all manner of excuses for not snapping up my Christmas book and devouring it in a single weekend, as he has done with all but one of his several Christmas books. On Sunday night Joren changed the question.

"Mom, where is Scarpetta?"

I stalled for a moment, twisted around in the computer chair, and pointed at the short bookshelf triumphantly delcaring, "Right there!"

"Oh," he pondered, "I'm surprised you even knew where it was."

He sounded like a forlorn kid who was trying really hard to refrain from grousing in a situation that clearly has been lacking appropriate gratitude on my part. He wandered off into the other room to watch TV with his father. I couldn't let it end like that and followed asking,

"Joren, why did you buy me that particular book?"

"Well, Mom, funny you should ask. Actually it was a mistake."

AHA! I knew there was something odd about this whole affair. It wasn't simply my lack of immediate interest, he had some guilt around it, too.

Turns out he was at Target and called his father on the cell phone to ask which book was on my Christmas list. Rather than telling Joren the name of the book, he described the color of the cover and its location in the Target book section. My husband is significantly colorblind. Joren knows this and figured he would be safe since the book jacket was reportedly silver, which is a color Dale sees well. Unless it's a metallic tone of light green or pink, which would look gray to Dale. Joren found the silver book, it fit the general genre of my preference, so he purchased it and wrapped it up and gave it to me for Christmas.

Then Joren revealed another piece of the puzzle.

"Mom, you should know that I was pissed when you gave me books that weren't on my Christmas list. But then I figured out that you gave me the first book in each of the series I asked for. I didn't realize the ones I put on my list were in trilogies or series and weren't the first ones. Thank you for taking care of that for me. I like them all." BIG GRIN!

To which I responded, "Well, Scarpetta is damn near the 20th book in this series, so I'm headed for the library to get my background reading accomplished. It will be a while before I get to Scarpetta. I promise I'll let you know how they are when I'm finshed." BIG GRIN!

We hugged and went off to bed with our books. So now I'm half way through The Body Farm, the fifth in what appears to be a 16 book series. I couldn't find any of the first four books in the library and I was eager to get started. I haven't decided if I'll back track or move on from this point. She's almost too graphic with the physical forensics for me. But the stroy and the developing relationships are captivating. So we'll see.

So, what are YOU reading these days?