The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho. I am glad I read this book. I recommended it for our book club for the month of May, so I thought I'd better read it. It has lots of great advice for one and all. Most of all it made me grateful for the gospel and the Spirit. We are so lucky to already know that we need only to listen to the promptings of the Spirit to find our way. . . and the more we listen, the more we can hear.
I must also share with you the miracle of the emu feathers. Susan loaned me the book, The Alchemist as I was leaving Orderville. Isaac also came up and gifted me some emu feathers. Apparently they come in twos, like the Ponderosa Pine needles that come in threes. Isaac gave me one set of perfect feathers and another feather that was all alone, its partner feather had broken off. So, as I left, I stuck them into the book. Well, later in the week I took the book to the gym to read. As I was cruising along on the elliptical machine I noticed a feather falling out. I quickly saved it and searched for the other pair of feathers. They had already fallen out. I almost fell off the machine looking for them, of course I couldn't stop the machine altogether. The handle also almost gave me a concussion while I was searching, but to no avail. When I finished my "workout" I searched again but found nothing. What a bummer to lose the pair!
Then next day I was back at the gym and after my workout I went to get a drink. There lying on the ground, close to the drinking fountain, I found my pair of emu feathers. What a miracle! I scooped them up as quick as I could. Who knows who might be around with the intent of stealing away my feathers. So, thank you Isaac, I love the feathers.
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray. The jury is still out on this one. It was OK dawg, a little pitchy in the middle... (In case you don't watch American Idol, that is what Randy Jackson says when the performance wasn't that great.) So, the book was a little too adult for me, doesn't take much. I can't decide whether to read the other two books. I don't love the heroine, she's OK dawg, but I don't think she's great or anything. Anyone who has read them, tell me if I should read on or not.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick. I have been waiting for months for the book fair to come to B's school so I could buy this book (BOGO... buy one get one free). So I bought it and read it. What fun! So many great pictures/drawings that help tell the story. The book is fat and a little intimidating, but most of it is pictures. Many of the pages with words don't even use half of the page... so it is really much shorter than it weighs. I read it today. It really is a work of art. The font, the black and white pages, the drawings, the fun story... loved it.
Confessions of an Unbalanced Woman, Emily Watts. A teeny tiny book that DiAnn gave me. She read it again on the plane ride out to come to Grandpa Jack's funeral. I've read it only once, but I need a repeat. It is fantastic and helped me refocus. Here is an exerpt: "I don't know how it is that I can spend hours laboring over a stack of men's socks, laying them out on the bed to make it easier to compare them with each other, holding them up to the light, even carrying them over to the window to ensure that I am matching black with black and navy blue with navy blue... but the instant my husband sits down in sacrament meeting, I can tell that he's wearing one of each. Maybe there's just something about the lighting in the chapel. maybe I should be taking his socks over to the church to sort them." It is a really fun book that helps put thing into perspective.
