My blog was waylaid by a good book

Just a short post today. My plans for this week got waylaid by a good book. Don’t you just love when that happens?

Babysitting doesn’t get in the way of me preparing my blog. Cleaning the house doesn’t interfere. Even my son’s wedding didn’t interfere. But a good book? Stopped me in my tracks.

I babysit my grandchildren on Mondays and Tuesdays. Two babies under the age of seven months old keep me young and in need of ibuprofen. My sister-in-law Kim helps me out on Tuesdays, because she both enjoys being around the babies, and she knows I’m not as young as I used to be. Two sets of hands for two babies makes for a good ratio.

In addition to her time, she often brings little gifts: clothes and toys for the twins and books for me. She’s just thoughtful like that.

Some books are hits, some are misses. I gave up on Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I know, I know, it’s not just fiction, it’s literature, but gosh, it’s wordy. Another book she brought me this week was a quick read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it: The Quilt by T. Davis Bunn.

(I also spent time this week reading a book my son gave me, Teaming With Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. Well, actually he gave it to Jeff as a Father’s Day present, but I have commandeered it in an attempt to resuscitate my roses. It’s a slower read, full of nematodes, bacteria, and dirt, and it may take me weeks to absorb. I am currently learning about the difference between sand, silt, and clay soils. Apparently, the goal in garden soil is to make loam, roughly equal parts of all three. I hope my roses appreciate the effort I am putting into saving them.)

But those aren’t the reason my blog is a little scatterbrained this week.

The fault lies with a novel called The Last Life Boat by Hazel Gaynor, and it’s the type of book that makes me jealous as a writer. The kind where I can’t decide if I want to throw my computer against the wall and never write another word, or cloister myself in my lonely garret/office until I have finished my own great American novel. I gobbled this story up, hook, line, and sinker, so to speak. It drew me in so tightly I lost track of time and space. So immersed was I in the narrative that when Jeff spoke to me I was startled to look up from the pages and find that I was not adrift in a life boat, trying to keep a group of children alive after being torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat while fighting off storms, starvation, and despair.

And now that I’ve finished the shipwreck book, I will recover from my sea adventure by enjoying one of my guilty pleasures: The Incredible Mr. Limpet. Hey, it’s in keeping with the World War II theme.

And then maybe I’ll trek upstairs to the garret to work on my own compelling story.

Hope you find a good book to lose yourself in this summer.