GIRLS LIKE US by Sheila Weller. It brings back the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and onward through the lives of Carole King, Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell, all pioneer women who paid big for their freedom.

Cookbooks; Biographies; History; Classics; Mysteries; Newspapers from other areas; the back of cereal boxes; Genealogy; occasionally Phone Books (really, the can be very interesting) and so much more. I remember as a teen, the first time I read “Gone With The Wind” and I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. Harper Lee’s, To Kill A Mockingbird”; “How Green Was My Valley” and the list goes on. My children tell me that’s one of their favorite memories of curling up in bed with me after their evening baths to be read a story before bedtime. I rmember reading with a flashlight under the covers at my Grandmother’s farm and having my husband tell me I had to weed out my books when they weighed more than any of our household goods during our moving from one state to another. I usually have several books, magazines and newspapers beside my bed that I am in the process of reading. I like to read Scott Turrow and David Balducci for mysteries. I’m afraid I’ve reached that situation again where I have more books than room for them so I have stacks of books all over the house and in boxes in the garage so it’s time to weed out again and that’s so hard to decide which ones I’m ready to get rid of and yet I keep buying more. I love the books of Molly Ivins and have ordered her last one and a Microwaving Cookbook for One just recently. Loved Molly’s columns, too. Anything I’m curious about and that’s a lot sets me on the path to read about it. TV just isn’t what it used to be so I don’t waste much time on that, but I love movies, too. I’m afraid I haven’t been too specific here, humm, just finished several books on Barrie (Peter Pan) and Paula Dean. When I was 7 yrs. old and went to live with my Grandmother, she didn’t have a lot of reading material other than the Bible, but I found a copy of The Snakepit and read that.

Good lord, The Sankepit—now tht takes me back—Olivia de Havilland—JJ: thank you for that memory

I love Elizabeth Berg (introduced to me by my sister) and just finished “True to Form”. I laughed out loud in parts and cried in others. Today I bought the two earlier novels about the same character. Two of my very favorite books of Berg’s are “what we Keep” and “Talk Before Sleep”. Elizabeth Berg is a tremendously talented author.

Ah, Julia…embrace the Spenser! I loved the television series…Avery Brooks..he WAS HAWK! So cool! I read everything…but when I want a good beach read, a good bath tub read, etc. I want a Spenser book! Because cooking is my passion, I love the food references as much as I love the relationship between Spenser, Susan, and of course “the baby” Pearl! My latest “fluff” read was Chelsea Handler’s “Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea!” I laughed so hard! She is one of my favorite comics, and a gifted writer.

Oh, anything from Jody Piccoult. She writes on controversial subjects like in “My Sister’s Keeper”, where a child has leukemia, so the family has another baby to harvest her stem cells. Or “Nineteen Minutes”—a story along the lines of Columbine,but from the family of the killer’s perspective. Not your everyday fiction.

I am reading “Never look Back” By KATHY HERMAN.

“Paradoxical as this may sound, it is easy to ignore your own perceptions. Whatever is unexpressed retires quickly to dark corners of the mind, often to be forgotten. But if you turn your attention inward and study what is inside, you will be able to remember what you perceived or felt and in this way restore the full scope of your being. In the same way that the observation of nature leads to conservation, reflection is essential to the preservation of the soul. But to know yourself presents a challenge when all around you, you find proscriptions against certain thoughts and models for how you ought to think or feel, even who you should be, an environment that tends to make you reject your own insights.” A sample from “Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy, on Being an American Citizen,” by Susan Griffin (Trumpeter, 2008).

Hello Frank et. al. I have enjoyed your comments, suggestions. For me it’s all of Virginia Woolfe, most of Annie Proulx and lots of Pema Chodron. At the moment I’ve been on a Jon Krakauer, as someone said, “bender.” First there was Into the Wild and I am finishing Under the Banner of Heaven. How timely is that? And then I’m on to Into Thin Air. I’m curious about Umberto Ecco. I was delighted to see so many fond comments in referrence to Edna St. Vencent Millay. I’m sort of a namesake. My mother always loved her and the poetry of Sara Tisdale. My first name, real name is St. Lawrence. My father’s middle name was Lawrence and the St. was a tip of the hat to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I can remember a sobbing fit with my mother when I was about 2nd grade or so when I said my friends have names like Vicki and Sandy! How could you name me Laurie? No one is named Laurie, let ALONE St. Lawrence! She there thered me that someday I would cherish both names. I do. For a time, when stamps were 10 cents, I published poetry under the nom de plume Lawrence Kansas.