oasis norfolk

The Book Worm has new spectacles!

Now the nights are drawing in it’s an even better time to put your feet up and start reading.  Do make sure that you have adequate lighting though.  I’ve just got new spectacles which are helping.  There is Macular Degeneration in my family so I am keen to have my eyes checked out at regular intervals.

The Book Worm has as always been busy through the summer. At the Library’s recommendation I read The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. It is her autobiographical story of walking the South West Coast Path after she has some catastrophic life changes. (Her husband has been diagnosed with a degenerative disease and they have lost their home of 30 years.)  Raynor and husband Moth  have only the barest funds to live on so where possible they `wild camp’ and walk almost the whole distance. Those who know the area will the story particularly interesting as well as admiring the grit of human endurance.

I also read Believe Me, Eddie Izzard’s autobiography. He is an amazing talented person but like many comedians likes using a lot of words. I felt a little let down: “All sound and fury signifying nothing” as the Bard once wrote (I think!). Sorry Eddie.

I’ve discovered Lisa Jewel, her book The House We Grew Up In had many a twist and turn. Family life but, thank goodness, not as I knew it! Suicide, hoarding and dark secrets fortunately almost all resolved . I’ll be borrowing Lisa again.

The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali was a fascinating  read spanning the life of a young women born in Iran (formally Persia of course) before the Shah was deposed, through  the advent of Ayatollah Homeni,  lost love, her flight to university in the USA and subsequent  life. A tale of a different culture, misunderstandings, food and love in many forms!

I’ve just finished a book called The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek  by Kim Michele Richardson. Did you know there is a recessive gene which makes people blue? Yes really, it’s called Methemoglobinemia.  Although the book is fiction isolated Troublesome Creek is a real place in Kentucky. Think Coal Miners Daughter! Cussy (nickname Bluet)  and her family have the blue gene which as far as the locals think, makes her `coloured’ and this in the 1930s before discrimination laws came into force. There is a drug that `cures’ the blue but it has many adverse affects.

Bluet has managed to secure the job of Book Woman taking  books (all donated by more affluent areas) and old magazines by mule to dirt poor  folk living up in the mountains (I suppose we would call them Hillbillies but they were/are extremely proud).  Her father knows he is dying and forces her to (disastrously) marry as he thinks she will be protected when he passes but it’s simply awful. Husband dies during giving her an awful beating.

Slowly Bluet builds a new life and we meet more of the mountain folk, learn of their love of and delight in the written word.

The real Book Women were astonishingly brave trekking solo in all weather to take reading matter to their `patrons’ and small schools. How folks loved those books tattered and second hand though they were.

The book worm family never went into Kentucky but did visit the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and parts of Georgia so the description of the trails really resonated with me.

A most amazing read!

Loraine