History made mandatory!

Last day of another month! Time is the reason we stress out! Who needs messages and drugs all we need is extra hours to feel better!
Enough on personal life, what can be done to better the human race is a good thought.
Making history mandatory not just a little twice a week course can be an answer. Starting in the 5Th grade (when we as kids begin to feel we know it all). If we can teach the children (who God willing will become adults) that history will repeat itself unless we can do things differently. Bad history can be avoided. First have the books written with truth in every sentence. Next as the children grow older have them read books like CITIZEN SOLDIERS by Stephen Ambrose. Don't have them read too much before 1900 since we have had since then so many wars to cover. NIGHT by E. Wiesel, or PRIEST BLOCK25487 by Jean Bernard, just that one war (WWII) will serve to teach them how everyone suffered. Albert Spear's SPANDAU DIARIES or a woman's view like BERLIN DIARIES by Marie Vassiltchikov. Fiction to understand the stress on human nature like Nevil Shute's A TOWN CALL ALICE or ORDEAL. The list is endless, but if we see where we as a society went wrong then we can avoid repeating the same again and again. Voices in books are written by those who lived it we do we insist on committing the same errors?

This is a hot one!

Summer,where did July go to, if you see it let me know, I am short one full month. Life is making a time-traveler out of me, but I don't go anywhere, I just stand still and loose days and weeks in a flash.As I came to finally sit down and think that the days are getting really hot all over our country, my mind went to good books I've read dealing with sunny days and heart warming stories.Three came quickly to mind. The first is HOTEL PASTIS by Peter Mayle, who wrote A YEAR IN PROVANCE; this one has a little mystery but it does have a lot of French country life in it.But the ambiance is truly French.
EXTRA VIRGIN, is yes about olives and their oil. This is a nice simple story of two London friends (at least I think they're British), who end up buying an old but could be made profitable house and land. It is in a little village called San Pietro, in the area of Liguria in Italy.The author is Anne Hawes.
The last book is UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN by Frances Mayes. No the book is nothing like the movie that came out come years ago. The book though is about a couple who give up the 'rat race' and become part of a small community in the Tuscany part of Italy. This book truly reminded me the most of the 12 years I spent in my home town in Mexico, as a mother of two soon to be teenagers.
We are all "travelers" in this world and these books just focus on things that could happen when we try to fit into other cultures, you see things from another prospective.

Good Authors Give Us Good Movies

I have been meaning to look and see what else has Amy Tan's written. After seeing the movie THE JOY LUCK CLUB, I looked her up. Actually that's always been a good tip for finding new authors. If you like a movie then check to see if it has been based on a book. Sometimes they are and that gives you a name to look up in the library catalogue.
Getting back to Tan, I did try to read one or two but my all time favorite is THE BONE SETTERS DAUGHTER. This book really had that special touch that has you intrigue and reading until the late hours when your eyes feel like they are on a paper plate!
Then came the autobiographical THE OPPOSITE OF FATE, which was great for me because I loved the JLC movie and the Bonesetters Daughter book so this book tied them up nicely to see what they meant in her life.

It's the same with some other writers like Leon Uris and two of his books MILA 18 and TOPAZ did he not also write EXODUS ? They all sort of tell us how life was;both in world politics and the characters of these stories, in the 40's up to the 60's.
And these where also made into great movies. But good authors sometimes don't make their way on to the big screen, like George Simenon, maybe because the few that were made didn't give us that deep study on the workings of the human mind, which books give you, the slow turns and time to get the point before the actual act or crime is committed?

BLACK HOLES

I just had to take time to see when was it that I actually wrote instead of thinking of this little blog, and I was shocked that it has been this long. I started to wonder if real time has black holes, like they say that exist in the milky way galaxy or just out there?

I was watching the French Open, which is the only thing I like that is French. It is sad that God gave them so many saints and pilgrimage sites and beautiful cathedrals and I can go on and on, and yet, I feel they are a sad society. You know what, there should be an -international - website where we can see the top selling books (fiction and nonfiction) from each of the countries that are members of the U.N.. That way we could see where the thinking of a nation is going. O.K. I guess I wouldn't want to find out that cartoons or moviestar magazines were the top of our country's list.

But watching top tennis being played and the rich tradition and high regards for its players is great to see. I compare it to reading a very good 600 page book (which takes just as long as the days for this tournament to occure).

Nothing is more changing that Life itself.

It is so true that we are all in God's hand. We can and really should make plans if only in an outline form, but as they say nothing is written in cement.
But to tell you the truth illnesses are at times also useful to have people leave you in peace to READ! I had just that kind of month so I really did get some reading in. But I get mad with myself for being anxious to read two authors I have in mind and their books are not yet out.
One of those authors is Daniel Silva, the other is Charles Todd. I guess I should remember that I also felt that way about Lawrence Sanders back in the late 1970's and 1980's until he started to write the dumb series with all those horse racing terms with the Florida background. Then there was James Patterson who was good until now when he can't write without someone filling all his stories (I wonder if he still lives?). Anne Perry is another good author but her stories are better explained on film-or the BBC crime shows. I wonder if age has anything to do with the style we like, I guess age gets into all our life's activities, but now I am able to understand and keep all of Agatha Christies' characters in her stories straight! Maybe one day I'll be able to do a Rubik Cube or whatever it was called, I'm just lucky I can park the car with the tiers all facing forward!

Philosophy Made Fun

I had to take time to let you know that if someone is looking for something light and funny, O.K. not ha-ha funny but the type of reading that makes your mind smile, I have a suggestion. It is the series ( one of them) that A. McCall Smith writes; 44 Scotland Street has a very highbrow cuteness to it. I was never good at reading philosophy books except to help my daughter get through an idea when she was at college. Which just means that I do understand the smart remarks but I also miss one or two points now and then in a story. I like this type of series which include a lot of characters but done in such a way that you can easily follow them in their different situations from book to book. I looked up the bio-info. on McCall Smith and found out he really is a very accomplish professor of law but has a degree in ethics and other very human studies. I am always surprised at the amount of information that is in Wikipedia (just remember it is not an exact information place). Your mind will thank you, I know a puzzle is better, but you won't lose any small piece !

O.K. this is a confession, I guess. As I get older I have found that audio-books are great.
You can be "reading" as you care for your 4 yr.old granddaughter or cooking or even just doing your ordinary things around your house. And if you fall asleep or get too busy to remember what happen you can go back and re-hear it. The public library has a great number of books on cassettes but now more and more on Cd's. Biographies and other non-fiction books are available.
But I still feel guilty because just the act of picking up a book is in my mind what Japanese think of their tea ritual. Am I normal? But I guess I'm at the point of life where books provide the stimuli for hope in humans. Religion is my daily bread but books in all it's forms are the spice or 'butter' on the bread. I remember as a pre-teen reading books on saints, they all (or almost all)
read constantly. When I walk into any office, when I see books or even better books on shelves it is a sure bet that the person is someone who is interesting, here I'll admit I may not end up liking this person, but that doesn't mean he or she would not be interesting.
So if you haven't tried audio-books you'll enjoy them; they read word for word the author's words and there are some really great readers. Books because of them I love authors!