Book #27 "The Bean Trees" and #28 "Dead Man's Mirror"

The year is coming to a close and somehow I didn't read the all the educational books I wanted to read. Maybe I need to be more organized with my reading and make a list of the books I wish to read then give them a short rather than reading what I feel like at the moment. The problem is, when you have a cold you don't feel like reading a history book. Instead, you feel like curling up with something easy which would be Agatha Christie books in my case. If the books I read were by my moods they would be:

Moods:                                        Books:

Pizza              "The Joy of Cooking", I could read that for hours

PMS        "Pride and Prejudice", Mr. Darcy would seem like the villain

Blizzard outside                           Any book in a tropical place or southern USA

Can't sleep                                   Anything Agatha Christie

Summertime          Here I could handle a British history book 

Feeling frumpy             "The Gospel According to Coco Chanel", "Bossypants" 

Fall chilly weather                       "Little Women"    

So if I read according to my mood I have little hope of furthering my literary borders...Maybe that means that this year instead of doing New Year's resolutions I should do Reading Resolutions. We will see. I think if I read "Crime and Punishment" when feeling frumpy or needing pizza I might explode. Maybe I need to fit books into my moods like:

Mood:                             Ideal Book:

Pizza                               Poetry by E.E Cummings 

PMS                                Something by some saint to tame my inner beast

Blizzard                          The History of Russia or the Yukon

Can't sleep                      Agatha Christie... mystery and teacups help me doze

Summertime                   "Crime and Punishment" could fit here

Feeling frumpy                Art history or something by a saint....       

Fall chilly weather          Music history or Biographies

       

It looks like I have it all figured out. I should make a list of books to read when I get bored at work have extra time. 

These last two books were fairly good. 

"The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver 

This coming of age novel reminded me of myself when I was 19ish. The protagonist Taylor Green just finished high school and sets out in her beat up car to find her way in the world. Her car breaks down in Oklahoma where a battered woman begs her to take a little baby girl. Taylor doesn't know what to do and has no choice but to take the child who she discovers is badly beaten and abused. She realizes that she saved the little girls life but has no idea how to take care of her. Taylor names the child "Turtle". Taylor finds an odd job working as a mechanic and rents a room with a single mother. Together they barely make ends meet while raising their babies. Taylor still doesn't know what to do about Turtle till one day when a man beats the child and Taylor takes her to the pediatrician. The pediatrician informs Taylor that the baby is actually around four-years-old and has suffered so much that it stunted her growth "failure to thrive" she calls it. Taylor then decides she needs to legally adopt Turtle but can't since she doesn't know her birth parents. She goes on a search for the parents then one day while searching Turtle says "mamma" and points to a grave. Taylor understands that Turtle saw her mother buried. Finally Taylor is able to convince two friends to pose as Cherokee parents giving up their daughter for Taylor to adopt. She adopts Turtle through this somewhat illegal process but is then able to have her as her legal daughter. 

This novel was hard to read. It made me think about the way young people grow up very quickly when put in harsh living conditions. It is a book that many high schoolers have to read so I thought it was worth a shot. It is a very sad book, though laced with moments of simple-living happiness and love. It showed how friends can help each other out, but also how harsh life can be for little children who deserve nothing but love and nurture. I would recommend this book because it shows glimpses of regional and rural American life in Oklahoma but also the harsh reality that is true for many under-privileged American young people and children.

"Dead Man's Mirror" by Agatha Christie

General Winter came down on me last Saturday and slapped me with a cold followed by a severe asthma attack that left me limp like a fallen decaying leaf for days. I couldn't get myself moving very far without pausing to breathe so I stayed in bed more than usual and read this while taking naps and getting my lungs to act like normal. 

I am not a fan of Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie's novels. I think he is a bit arrogant and a dandy. Besides he seems a bit affected as a stereotypical Frenchman. 

I think Agatha should have stuck to British characters. The trouble I am running into is that I have already read most of Agatha's good books so now have to decide if I can accept her favorite characters to continue enjoying her stories or give up. Agatha had two favorite characters who where very different from each other but both  made her a lot of money. Miss Marple who is a grandmotherly like British sleuth, and Hercule Poirot a dandy little Frenchman. I don't like either of them. Miss Marple doesn't convince me  that she has real intuition to somehow always guess who committed the crime. 

She is sweet, frumpy, and seems like the type of older woman who has too many things in her purse and always looses her sense of mental direction. So I don't see how Miss Marple always magically knows who committed the crime. 

However, I like her sense of fashion. Way to go, Miss Marple! 

Hercule Poirot, on the other hand, is arrogant but precise and does take notice of details that other people overlook. I like him better as a detective but his personality is a bit affected. In the end, the love of Agatha's crime solving tactics keep me guessing till the end of each novel where she reveals the truth. So far, I haven't correctly guessed any of the crimes.

Dead Man's Mirror wasn't bad. Hercule is asked to come to the house of an ego-centric man and as he arrives the man suddenly commits suicide. Hercule knows it was murder because such an ego-centric man who thought so much of himself would never kill himself. And he is right. As it turns out, everyone in the house had a reason to hate the rich man and a motive for killing him. It turned out that the rich old man wanted his adopted daughter to marry his nephew so they could keep the money in the family. He didn't know his adopted daughter had secretly eloped. As it turns out, his secretary was secretly the real mother of the adopted daughter and shot the rich old man to save her daughter from a life of misery. Ahhhhhh....as my mother would say "Que bonitas son las familias unidas." (United families are so beautiful). I don't think I have met one family like that.

I think I will give Hercule Poirot another chance. Right now I am in the middle of short stories by Miss Marple while I was waiting for an e-book to be available to be borrowed by the digitallibrarynj.com. Finally it is ("Cubed" is the book) and I am going to take a break from Agatha and Novels to read about the history of officework and cubical life.

On kitten news: Fatty has discovered that the laptop is warm.

And Bentley has discovered that my thighs are soft and the perfect place to sit while he watches me type.

Bentley contorted on my lap and resting on my left hand.

 He is very sweet though and I'm sort of enjoying his new phase of being a lap cat. His entire young life he was very active and busy and now that he is an old-man his character is mellowing out and he is more sweet and docile. 

The Puff is baking as an oatmeal cookie for tonight.