A Tale of Two Tales

I know, once a week or so is not frequent enough to post on a blog....However I currently am maintaining four blogs so even once a week is a fairly tall order!

I've been also reading several books (yes; simultaneously)...it's easy to do that on the Kindle. If you get to a spot where the hero is about to plunge into a seriously scary adventure that may well kill him...and you don't want to read that, then push a button, and bingo: you're in a different story altogether! I recently did that with Laura Hildebrand's book, "Unbroken"....this is one nail-biting account. It is about a world class runner who became a bombardier in a B-12 airplane in World War II's struggle against Japan. There comes a point in the story in the chapter entitled, "No one will Survive This!" where the plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean and he and two other men must survive in shark infested water on a life raft, without water or food, until they float far enough to land on an island occupied by the Japanese where they are taken as Prisoners of War. (and you can find this out from reading the book jacket so I'm not letting any cats out of any proverbial bags!) ...But knowing in advance that all this would happen, when I got to the above mentioned chapter...I had to put the book down. He'd already survived impossible situations against every odd...I didn't want him to have to go through this too....NOR did I want him to take me into it with him either! (okay, I'm officially a wuss).

So I pushed the handy dandy "Home" button on my Kindle to be taken to my library listing so I could spend some time in the woods on the Appalachian Trail with Bill Bryson...Facing bears and mosquitoes seemed like nothing after reading "Unbroken"! But the problem was: I finished that book relatively soon...so was forced to return to "Unbroken" to pick up that narrative in then tense spot where I'd left off.

So I survived the crash and the life raft...now am in a hopeless and frightening situation in the POW camp and am struggling not to look for something else to read. It is not that I don't like the book! I love it! It's one of the best books I've read....but it's terrifying...and I guess I'm just a softie; I don't like to see anyone suffer and die. But finish it I will, then off to Amazon to look for the next download - and I have no idea what type of book I want to read! Decisions! Choices! Help! (for the chronically conflicted and ambivalent, among you; you'll know what I mean by this quandary. I do think it's time to visit a nice big bookstore though. Not to buy books!! To window shop...and then slink home to Amazon and buy it from them.

Now I do realize that this is what is putting large and small bookstores right off the map. (See Borders for example). Because I"m a die hard bibliophile and because there is NOTHING better than spending an afternoon in a bookstore, sipping an iced coffee whilst you sample their wares....and it would be a crying shame to lose every one of them; I do still buy books. For example, I recently purchased "Unbroken" and "A Walk in the Woods" for my father who is to this point, Kindle-less and who devours books also. As does my daughter. In fact I, who used to read over 600 pages a day--until I became ill with schizophrenia and could no longer assimilate what the heck the book was about--am now the least frequent reader of all. (with the exception of my husband , who, however, has recently become a collector of the Dirk Pitt series by Clive Cussler, and is now working his way through them.) So I durst say that our family alone has kept Borders in business for as long as it was.

My biggest problem in reading nowadays is the brain damage I have suffered at the hands of a procedure called ECT...electro convulsive therapy. Yep. Shock treatments. These have quite effectively made me a child of the moment. No worry about me living in the past...because i do not recall 99% of the past three or four years...And if you tell me something today...or even if I do something exciting and remarkable today---I will not recall it tomorrow...and maybe not even five minutes later. But that is a wholly other story, which I will save for another time...and possibly another place.

But do the world a favor...Go out to a bookstore (NOT AMAZON.COM) and purchase a book or three. You might start with the two I've mentioned here. You very well could be saving an American institution.