Happy Reading!

As you can see, the poinsettias grow huge in Arizona, and guess what!  You can leave them out on the porch if you want to.

I’ve been cookie baking, wrapping presents, going to concerts, and, of course, hiking the trails.  We’ll both go out to Catalina State Park tomorrow — Jerry to climb to Romero Pools, me to trek Romero loop, which is not quite so strenuous.

While I wait for him to reappear, I’ll sit under a Palo Verde tree and read.  Right now, I’m reading two books at once.  The short one, which is almost due back to the library, is  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  Quick synopsis:  Harold, recently retired and in a loveless marriage, gets a letter from an old friend who is dying.  He very abruptly decides to walk 600 miles, the length of Great Britain, to deliver his reply in person.  He believes that as long as he walks, his friend Queenie will live. As he travels, he relives his life, meets people as crazy as he is, and reconciles his losses and regrets.

I love this book because I love Harold.  And hey, I want Queenie to stay alive as much as he does.

The second book, a longer one, is by one of my favorite writers — Richard Russo.  Nobody’s Fool is funny because of the quirky characters and their wonderful dialogue.  I quote from the back cover:  “[This] novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York — and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years.”

These characters delight me because of their humanity, their flaws, and their wonderful sense of humor.  Nothing beats the treasure of laughter.

May your coming days be filled with good books, good friends, and most important of all — love and laughter.