Rediscovering the Public Library

Happy Memorial Day! It's raining cats (and dogs) here. Has been for the past few days so it's been a wash as far as holiday weekends go. Since I can't really work in the yard or cook out, I've been reading. As much as I can with Miss Nettie in my lap. She views any open book or magazine as an invitation to lounge.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I use my commute to catch up on my reading. After several months of making the folks at Books a Million a little richer, I remembered I have a library card and decided to patronize them. They get the same books as the bookstores do. And they're free. Can't beat that.

I have always loved libraries since I got my first card at the Old Biloxi library some 43 years ago. I still remember the first two books I checked out, a modern illustrated Cinderella and a Madeleine book (apparently setting the stage for my love of Paris).

My mother signed me up for the summer reading program. I faithfully read two books a week (actually more like 4-5) and got a certificate (and a fudgesicle) at the reading program's graduation ceremony. From then on, I was hooked.

I am excited to have had an excuse to re-connect with the Hattiesburg Library. If you haven't been, it is a lovely building with sculptures, murals and a Mississippi room. Well worth a stop just to sight-see if you happen to be in town.

Not to copy Oprah, but I thought the readers among us might appreciate my take on some of the books out there. We're all short on time, and there's nothing I hate worse than committing 10 hours or so to a dog of a book.

Here are some of my recent favorites. They are particularly good on rainy days with a cup of tea, a cookie and a cat (or two or three) curled up in your lap.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.
Anyone who reads cookbooks as if they're novels, will love this story of a cooking class and how the students use that time to deal with other areas of their lives, from encroaching Alzheimer's to the death of a spouse. The plot is a little contrived, but the writing is lyrical. The descriptions of the food are so vivid, that you'll put down the book and head straight to the kitchen.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
This book, set in France on the eve of the Nazi occupation, was published a few years ago, after lying hidden and unknown for 64 years. Nemirovsky, already an established author, related how people of different classes reacted to the occupation and war. Her intent, as indicated in the notes she wrote in the margins of her manuscript, was to follow her fictional characters' lives through the war. She never got the chance. Nemirovsky, a Jew, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1942. She died there. This posthumous book is memorable, not only for it's beautiful writing, but for the tragedy of the author. The book has been edited only slightly and includes the author's notes as well as letters from her agent and friends trying to discover her whereabouts in the dark days after her deportation. It will break your heart.

So will The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman .
Unlike Nemirovsky's true-to-life-fiction about the Nazi occupation, this is a non-fiction book written like a novel. It details the lives of the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who used their home and the cages of their closed zoo as an Underground Railroad for refugees from their city's Jewish ghetto. Some of the passages will make you shake in horror and wonder how anyone raised in this environment ever turned out half-way normal.

The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris
This is another one for food lovers (or more precisely chocolate lovers). It is the sequel to Chocolat. If you loved that book (or the movie), you'll love this one too. A word of warning: stock up on some Godiva before even opening the cover.

Happy reading!