Word of the day:  Memoir (mem’-war) “a record of events based on the writers’ personal observation”

I’ve always been an avid reader.  From the second or third grade on, I always had a book in my hand.  Like most young girls, I went through the great phase of horse stories and dog stories. There were (and still are) so many great stories out there from the wonderful award-winning Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, to the wonderful Black Stallion and Island Stallion series by Walter Farley, and to one of my all-time favorites, Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard. That was the book that triggered my lifelong love for the magnificent Irish Setter breed.

In one of my childhood homes in University Park in Dallas, my bedroom had two window-box storage seats with lids that opened up. These little cubbyholes became my secret hideaway. I would snuggle down on a blanket in my little window box and read to my heart’s content with a flashlight to shine on the pages of one entrancing story after another. At night when my Mother had given the “lights out” admonition, I often sneaked into my little secret spot for a few more hours of furtive reading.

Alas, these days I would never fit into such a tiny space, and I would now be way too claustrophobic to even consider it all. What if I couldn’t get out? What if someone put something heavy on the seat? I have the same feeling today when I see TV stories about survivalists who build underground bunkers. What if I couldn’t get out? What if the entrance got blocked? I guess I will just have to take my chances on the surface.

Back to reading, by the seventh grade my best friend, June, and I had pretty well read the entire suggested college bound reading list. We waded through everything from Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre to A Tale of Two Cities and The Red Badge of Courage. That was back in the days when we were actually taught good literature in school.  I do have to admit though that I still cannot stand Silas Marner. I didn’t like it when I was forced to read it in the tenth grade, and quite frankly, I didn’t like it any better when I was obligated to teach it to my own long-suffering tenth grade students. When I was teaching high school, oh so many years ago, I did get in a bit of hot water with the Fort Worth Public School System for teaching Catcher in the Rye. That was way too radical a book for the early sixties, and it had questionable language! It is pretty mild by today’s standards. How times do change.

June and I were each going to write the great American novel! I had romantic visions of being another Thomas Wolfe, scribbling out the five hundred plus pages of Look Homeward Angel in longhand. A few thwarted efforts at writing fiction over the years convinced me that fiction just might not be my forte. My favorite reads today are long, complex historical novels. I especially like the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Her books bring home the literary concept of suspension of disbelief.  In other words, the story only works if you can accept the underlying premise for the moment.  In the case of Gabaldon’s books, you accept the idea of time travel.

I do so admire a writer who can weave a long, continuous story. For me, however, the intricacies of character development and of a complete plot just seemed too complex, so I turned instead to journaling and to more of a memoir type writing.  You’ll be seeing more of this style of writing in blogs to come.