In the beginning...

...there were The Flyaways, a family who traveled in their miraculous flying machine having daring adventures with Goldilocks and Cinderella. The first in the 3-book series by Alice Dale Hardy was published by Grosset and Dunlap in 1925 and copies are almost extinct. Few people remember Ma and Pa, Tommy and Susie Flyaway now.

I became acquainted with them on my grandfather's lap, my dear Grandpa Baker who read and read and read to me every evening for as many years as I can remember. I would hold my breath as each chapter ending neared, hoping he would not stop. I would keep begging for "just one more" chapter until his voice got so hoarse I would have to run to his room to get his throat lozenges.

Over the years we covered all of Uncle Wiggly and Honey Bunch, the Bobbsey Twins, the Five Little Peppers, the Wind in the Willow series, some of them more than once. He read to me until long after I could read everything for myself, until I was into Beverly Gray, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. I was safe and happy snuggled up on the couch with him and that feeling has never left me. I still read and read and read, and it still makes me feel safe and happy.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Okay, okay...

...so I haven't blogged in two months. There's been a lot going on here - house buying, many moves, cancer scare, lots of doctors, pain, retirement, frustration. I haven't stopped reading, just not writing about it. Here's a little catch up.

Another great Chevy Stevens Never Knowing. Susan finds her birth mother and her birth father turns out to be serial killer.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - fiction but well researched and fascinating by Melanie Benjamin.

Disturbance by Jan Burke. Reporter Irene Kelly and dectective husband Frank in another go-around with killer Nick Parrish who pulls off a prison escape goes after Irene.

This was an unusual offering from Roland Merullo. The Talk Funny Girl, sheltered in a rural home with strange parents involved in a cult and speaking their own dialect, accepts her abuse as normal until she is hired to assist a quiet young stonemason who is building his own cathedral.

More child abuse in this one - two boys are abandoned and incarcerated in a terrible institution until one is adopted by the wife of a prominent politician and the other runs away under the cloud of a murder accusation. More murders happen over the course of 15 years, the boys, now grown men, are reunited and the murders are solved.
Iron House by John Hart.