TALKING ABOUT BOOKS: #1

**My daughter, among others, never seems to have difficulty finding a new topic for her blog (look for her blog in the side-bar.). I agonize every time. What can possibly be interesting enough for me to impose upon potential readers? Half the time it’s based on whatever is in my camera and the rest of the time from suggestions or recent conversations. Now someone says, “Write about yourself”.

**OK. Well, I’ve always been a reader. I even took on the Public Library and the city council (with Mom’s help) when I was eight or nine years old because there was an unfair six book per week limit on children’s books. I could read six books a day plus the newspaper, some Bible, part of an encyclopedia, borrowed magazines, or anything else I could find in print. After a few challenging meetings that limit was lifted and I began to check out ten or fifteen books a couple of times a week, and continued at that rate for years. Overall, I probably have averaged reading at least two or three books a week for nearly 65 years. I love all kinds of book collections, book stores, book sales, and gravitate bookward whenever possible. I've had a library card since I was five and sometimes have carried several at once.

**In recent years however, I think I have slowed down somewhat, being busy with a lot of other interests and responsibilities. To compensate, I have taken up reading multiple books at the same time. I’ll pick up a book, read a few pages or a chapter, or for an hour or two and set it down to continue later. Consequently, there are books at bedside, by my easy chair, in the garage, upstairs, and sometimes in the cars. A few here, a stack there, another tucked on a tool shelf and a couple in my barrister case. As I finish one, it is soon replaced by another keeping several going at the same time. It’s sort of a parallel, time-conservation approach to deal (1) with many conflicts, interruptions, and a busy schedule, (2) with an attention span which gets shorter every year, and (3) with soooooo many books.

**Over the next three blogs I’ll share an annotated inventory of books recently read, currently being read, and on the “Read Soon” list. I limited the lists to ten each or this blog would never end. Besides these texts, I have hundreds of books in boxes and on shelves in the attic which I have read and liked and kept, and books I plan to read or reread someday, or books I keep handy for research on topics of interest. The following lists are in no particular order.

**Books Recently Read:
1. The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature. – Cathy Johnson. [I’m taking oil painting classes now so I’ve been reading a lot of art books lately.]
2. Flags of our Fathers. – James Bradley. [ This book, like “Flyboys” proves war is truly hell, which makes the accounts of heroism in it even more poignant.]
3. The Art of Gaman – Arts and Crafts from the Japanese-American Internment Camps 1942-1946. - Delphine Hirasuma. [We saw these beautiful, ingenious and practical artifacts made from junk, cast-off, and found materials at a recent exhibition, and I had to buy the book because photographs were not allowed.]
4. Galileo’s Daughter. – Dava Sobel. [Anything written by Dava Sobel is a rich read.]
5. The Bonsai Art of (Mashike) Kimura. – Kashito Onishi. [My collection of bonsai books now numbers about seventy texts. This is a wonderful addition.]
6. The first seven of twenty (Alaska) Kate Shugak mysteries by Dana Stabenow. [Well written and full of Alaskan culture, places and experiences. I've got the other thirteen and I'm eager to read them all.]
7. All the (Alaskan) Sue Henry mysteries about Jessie Arnold and Maxie and Stretch. [This is another great series also pointed out to me by my book-loving friend Ted P.]
8. Fearless Men and Fabulous Women; A Reporter's Memoir of Alaska and the Yukon. – Stanton Patty. [An awesome book about remarkable pioneer Alaskans. Unfortunately, it’s Out of Print, but hunt for it in on-line bookstores. It will be worth the effort!! I know the author, a retired and revered newspaper journalist whose beat was Alaska, so if you would like to pass along your appreciation, I’ll get your comments to him.]
9. Looking Like the Enemy; My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps. - Mary Matsuda Gruenwald (Family #19788) [An intense personal diary of living through a terrible experience when 120,000 Westcoast Americans were imprisoned and banished to concentration camps just for being Japanese during WWII.]
10. Proverbs. [I should also mention this Old Testament book which has been this year’s study in the Senior Saints Class I teach.]

**Now, What books have you read recently? Either e-mail me your list or tell me where to find it on your own blog.