Reading is addictive

I've lost myself in reading lately, and not even the mysteries that I constantly consume. But I have so many books I want to read that I'm ignoring other things I should be doing--like working on my new novel. It started with a book I am to review for the Dallas Morning News, titled 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Families in One Tenement. Set in the lower East Side of New York City, it spans the 1860s through the Depression. I won't be a spoiler for the review, except to say that it chronicles the way various cultures--German, Irish, Jewish, and Italian--contributed to American foodways and in turn, the habits they assimilatede from American culture. I read it avidly and had the review ready a month before it was due.
Then I became probably the last person I know to read Katherine Stockton's The Help, about the relationships between white women and their black maids in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. It's hard for me to believe some of the white women, and I thought perhaps they were caricatures, but friends who lived in the South assure me it's true. Stockton, who grew up in Jackson, turned the material into a riveting novel, and although I ached for the black women, the one who gave me the most pain was a little girl named Mae Mobley who thought her nanny was her real mother because the mother never gave her any love or attention. When the maid is fired, for becoming part of an imaginary tell-all book, she walks away hearing Mae Mobley's anguished screams. It's a book you can't read without being moved, and I spent almost all of last weekend reading it.
The Help made me think of GeeGee, the black nanny we had in Chicago when I was a toddler. Relations between her and my mother were much more cordial, though I can remember Mom recalling her amazement (and disapproval) when GeeGee let me eat four eggs for breakfast one morning (maybe that's why I didn't like them for years!). I asked my brother the other day when GeeGee left and how old I was, but he just shook his head and said he didn't now. "They're so many questions I didn't ask and now wish I had," he said. I remember GeeGee coming back once for a visit and how happy we were to see her. In retrospect, I wonder if the death of my younger sister at six months (probably SIDS, though I was told she had a heart defect) didn't contribute to GeeGee's leaving.
Now, I'm reading an advance copy of Spilling the Beans, by Clarissa Dickson Wright, one of BBC's Two Fat Ladies who wheeled about the countryside in a motorcycle and sidecar cooking at various locations and gatherings. If you ever watched the show--and millions did--the picture on the cover will be familiar: a dumpy, slightly rumpled English woman in a  funny hat with a big smile on her face. The inside of the book reveals a far different and intriguing story. I'm reviewing this one for the Story Circle Network, so don't want to be a spoiler there either.
Speaking of the Story Circle Network, Beth Knudson and I are going to coordinate a class on Writing Your Life Story, based on the principles of the Story Circle Network beginning in early May, You don't have to join the network to be part of the class, but there is a fee. And we're going to ask everyone to participate in pot-luck snacks and wine. If you'd like more information, e-mail me at j.alter@tcu.edu. And if you're interested, you might search for Story Circle Network on Google. It's an international organization designed to help women tell their life stories. I've taught the class twice for the TCU community class program.
A food note: I've had a delicious day and still come out ahead on points. For lunch I had a tuna salad plate at a place I rarely go--it was really good, came with a quarter hard boiled egg, a bit of tomato, one thin slice of avocado, and a fruit cup. Tonight Betty and I went to Nonna Tata (I was prepared and took a bottle of wine and two plastic wine glasses), and I had braseola (the Italian cured beef version of prosciutto) dressed in lemon and olive oil, with grana cheese, and a vinegar based German salad. One of my favorite meals.
Okay, back to Spilling the Beans.

Pretty much a professional day

No writing today. I was more a work person, though Jeannie and I went plant shopping this morning. I got lots of pots and some herbs, plus one hanging basket. Still need two more baskets, plus oregano and mint. Not sure why I walked by all the varieties of mint the nursery had, but the oregano was huge pots and I wawnt 4".  Greg is coming tomorrow to talk about what to do with what.
After lunch at Carshon's with Jeannie, I came home for a quick nap--it's an addiction by now--then to a 3:00 p.m.meeting at the press. I sure hope they don't do that often because it messes up my day.But it was a meeting I couldn't miss, mostly talking about the acquisitions list, which is my baliwick.
Then home for a quick change and off to the annual Friends of the Library dinner. Over dinner, I had a most interesting and far-ranging talk with the assistant dean of the library and one of the members of the Friends board. Talked ranged from the little lizard that crawled out of the hanging plant I bought today--Jeannie did NOT want it in her car--to contractors, travels, and phobias.
The speaker was Deborah Dean, author Madonnas of Leningrad, and she was fascinating. Her book is aboiut the crating and shipping of the valuable art to get it out of the Hermitage before the Nazis bombed and how some of the museum staff lived in bomb shelters under the museum during the bombing. One man used to give tours of the museum, pointing to empty frames and speaking eloquently about the works of art that belonged there. They have now, of course, all been returned to their frames. But Deborah's talk about how she became a writer, how she researched and wrote the novel, and her trip to Russia was inspirational. She wrote the book without having been to Russia but went there three weeks before the final manuscript was due to "make sure I got it right." A really pleasant evening, with a Russian meal to accompany it--pirogues instead of salad (there went the diet) and chicken Kiev.
A long day,and I'm sleepy. No deep thoughts, except that folks should read The Madonnas of Leningrad. Jeannie dropped off her copy of The Help today, which I think everyone but me has read. Mel, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, where it's set, says it's dead one, so it's next on my list after I finish the Kate Carlisle mystery I'm reading. Such a lovely luxury to have time for reading in retirement.