Good Reads

I’ve had more time than usual to read the last week or two and here are two books I enjoyed. First, there’s Lift by Kelly Corrigan. I read her book, The Middle Place, two months ago, in hopes that my work calendar would clear enough to let me hear her speak at our local library’s fund raiser. I did not get to hear her talk, but I did learn a lot about her life as The Middle Place describes both her and her father’s battle with cancer. The Middle Place was okay, but I really liked Lift. The language is poetic and the words formed pictures that I could see just as clearly as the photographs she includes at the back of the book. With only 82 pages, I read Lift while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Of course, I blamed it on allergies when the other patients caught me crying. Corrigan took the name of the book, Lift, from the description of hang gliding. A friend told how in order to fly, you have to be willing to launch yourself into turbulence. She compared that description to parenting. The joys we experience as parents often come as a result of the hard times we go through with our children. Corrigan wrote the stories for her daughters because she heard that most children only remember ten things from their own childhood. Corrigan wanted to record the stories in case something happened to her (she overcame cancer once) so that they would have them in the future. She gave a great description about what it means to be a mother. I particularly enjoyed the story of her friend Meg, a single woman who decides to have a baby, and Meg’s grandmother’s reaction to the news. While Lift was an easy read, These is My Words by Nancy E. Turner was so gripping that I carried it everywhere with me and even read it at stop lights. I could not put this novel, written in diary format, down. It is the story of a young woman, Sarah Prine, raised on the Arizona frontier and spans two decades from 1880-1910. Sarah falls in love with an Army Captain, Jack Elliot, and there is such tension between the two that kept me wondering if they would live happily ever after until the final page. It is not a short book, but once I was finished, I longed for more stories about Sarah. Imagine my delight to find that Turner wrote two sequels which I have on reserve at our library. So, whether you are looking for a quick, inspiring read like Lift, or a page turner that will take your mind off your troubles and onto Sarah’s as she escapes the bad guys and wards off Indian attacks, here’s two books to consider. And of course, there is always my favorite book, the Bible. A guaranteed page turner with stories of heroes and villains as well as words that comfort, inspire and change lives.