Playing Catch-Up

Wow! I think that's the longest I've gone between blog postings since starting this baby back in January. I haven't had as much time to write as I'd like, because I've been spending so much time reading Isabel Paterson novels. They are all out of print, so I have to get them from the library, and the King County Library System doesn't own any of them, so I've had to get them from the Inter-Library Loan program. I requested about seven novels at once and they all came in in a timely manner (whoda thunk that a gov'ment operation could be so efficient?), and you can only check them out for three weeks (normally KCLS checks out for four weeks), and they are non-renewable. So you can see why I've been kept so busy.

But, I put this counter do-hickey on my blog late last week, and, earlier on Tuesday, the counter read at nineteen hits. Then, later in the evening, the counter read thirty-two hits. I don't think that I sneaked onto my blog thirteen times within a few hours, nor can I imagine that Jason and my dad combined could have added so much to the counter, so maybe I've had some visitors - which is a very exciting possibility! Another possibility, of course, is that Bravenet has programmed their counters to up a few numbers to aid the self-esteem of insecure, low-traffic bloggers. If the former is the case, which I certainly hope is true, then I thought I'd better put a little update on this site, so as not to discourage frequent visitors.

I'm in the middle of my fourth Isabel Paterson novel, The Golden Vanity. Her biographer, Stephen D. Cox, avers that this is the best of her novels. It is quite good, but I've enjoyed everything I've read of hers so far. I especially enjoyed the two I read of her historical fiction trilogy, The Fourth Queen and The Road of the Gods. Her breadth of historical knowledge and her ability to make bygone times and the characters therein so fresh and revelant is simply astonishing. The third in the trilogy, The Singing Season (which I believe was actually the first book in the series written, but the one that it took KCLS the longest to retrieve), is awaiting my perusal, and I can hardly wait. But, The Golden Vanity is due first, so I'll be lost in a world quite a bit more modern (1920s and 1930s America), but still removed from my own experience by years and sensibilities for a while yet.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: I cannot live without books. I could not agree more. At least, I wouldn't want to live without books. I am so grateful that Sadie loves books as much as I. I am looking so forward to sharing my favorites with her, and having her share her new discoveries with me. I'll have to try to collect these out-of-print Paterson novels over the years, because I'm bursting to talk them over with someone, and probably no one alive today has read them all, other than Dr. Cox (and I cannot keep bugging that poor man - no matter how much I'd like to!). I'm thinking that they'll be a great homeschooling unit for when Sadie is about twelve or thirteen. Whoo-hoo!

Peace to all!