Reading It

jodiann 7 April 2009 Guest Review 124 views One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Howdy All, Jodiann here. Bunny was crazy enough to ask me to write about the books I read and I was just nutty enough to accept. I am starting with one of my favorites, one I have read a couple dozen times. It sits on my bedside table with a select few and I read it a few times a year. As I age, I find the my loyalties change. I was partial to ” A Cantacle For Roadcat” at first and “Incident at Sweet Marsh” soon after because animal stories are easy to love, like animals.

Then Waller’s stories about people who take care of animals got me. ” In Cedar Key, Harriet Smith Loves Birds, and Hates Plastic.” Then I got into the ones about Waller and his family. Now I see the ones written about other people, not family,  Waller admired as the most valuable. As if I finally understand why he felt compelled to write about them above all those he could have chosen. 

I got this book from a book club about 15 years ago,  you know when you get a dozen or some odd books for a penny to join the club? Well, I had run out of DIY and biographies choices and needed to fill in a few more spots. I saw this guitar player on the cover and though it would work. (  instinctual weakness  for muscians I expect ) It turns out its the only book I remember reading. I bet I read all the others, even kept some of the DIYs, out of the Friends of the Library donation box. This book is going nowhere. It will sit at my bedside until I stop reading.  This is the book you want to let friends borrow, but don’t for fear it will never come back. Not because you have lousy friends! *grin* Because you know it’s that good.  I buy copies when I see them and give those away instead. Tricky. 

I want to read through this book THIS time while sharing Daily Updates on this site. I think DAILY  Updates sounds wishful, but I will give it a whirl. If it turns out to be a few good posts a week well then quality over quantity it is.

A little bit about the book and author:

I had no idea who Robert James Waller was. And I only have an inkling now. His book “Bridges of Madison County” had been released as a movie when I found this book, but I had no idea he was the writer. Like so many movies with big name actors the wheels DON’T show…that would be the writers. We think of the players but the players wouldn’t play if the writers didn’t write and the writers wouldn’t write unless they got away from the desk and experienced some life. So maybe its good we don’t know all the writers as well as we know the players. We would smother all the good stuff right out of them. Talked myself right out to that one! * guffaw*  So this book was released as a tie in to the movie so to speak. Except ”Old Songs in a New Cafe” is better than both “Bridges” and the movie it became. ( sorry Clint, Baby. Books are to movies what watching sunsets is to a picture of one. )   A wider range accounts for some of that, yet I like to think its because these stories cover the author’s experiences as a musician, traveler, photographer, and those he shares the journey with. The real life bits and pieces it takes a lifetime to write about with a depth of living a fictional book or a movie can only pretend at. 

This book is about the people and animals and things I care about. It’s about growing up and showing your stuff, finding love, winning and losing, and getting older. It’s about where I began and where I came to at a particular  part of my life, as a person and as a writer. And I suppose it’s also about where I’m headed, though I never seem to realize such things at the time.  We come, we do, we go and the doing can be rather a grand voyage if you don’t panic and if you believe, as I believe, in magic and imagination and wizards who live along quiet country rivers. ~ Robert James Waller