Certain days you always remember by association with whatever book you're reading. The book is permanently fused to the memory of the hours of one particular day and seems the perfect complement to or antidote to whatever is going on.
The Fairy Tale Girl (recommended by Linda Kot) was just right for this Monday--a day that started by waking up to find Mike gone, then going to Kate's for breakfast....After reading it, I hopped on Amazon and ordered three of Susan Branch's cookbooks for a penny each plus postage.
It's funny in places; it's packed with details (like brothers wearing their mothers' hose over their faces) (like their daddy building a bomb shelter for his family of eight children). It's poignant and sweet. Not a literary memoir, it's more like a scrapbook of memories--including stories of how she taught herself to cook using Julia Child's cookbook; how she fell in love; how her fairy tale expectations unraveled; how she taught herself to paint with watercolors; how her "hobby" led to publication of several books.
It's interspersed with quotations and lyrics of songs that we all know by heart. And her family photographs? They look like all of our family snapshots--the children lined up and smiling into the camera while someone says, "Stand still!"
This is a book to lose yourself in for a day--and, if you were born in the Forties--to find pieces of yourself.
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