Day 2 - A Book I've Read More than 3 Times

It's week two of my 30-Day (Week) Book Meme, and I'm supposed to talk about a book I've read more than 3 times. Excluding children's books read more than 1,000 times to kids and grandkids, I think the list is probably fairly short. Not because I don't have some favorite books, but because I'm always feeling so behind on the stack of books waiting for me to read them for the first time. 

I mean, I'm currently reading Mary, Mary by Ed McBain, a book I bought new when it came out back in 1993. That's more than 20 years ago. I've packed and moved that book all around town and then, finally, across the country. It's been such a patient book, I thought it deserved to finally be read, so even though I'm feeling the pull to read an old favorite again, I moved Mary to the top of the list. 

But that's not the issue here. The task today is to talk about a book I've read more than 3 times. This one's easy. My book of choice is Cashelmara by Susan Howatch. (Surprise! Another Susan Howatch book) 

I'm choosing it because I received a notice yesterday that it was available on Kindle for a ridiculously low price -- ridiculous when you consider how much I love this book. I think I own at least two print copies--maybe three--because you can never own too many of a favorite book. 

In nineteenth-century Ireland, the de Salis family carries on through times of both riches and hardship, but their hard-won resilience will be threatened by tragedy of their own making

When Edward de Salis travels to America after the death of his first wife, he is astonished to find himself falling in love with Marguerite, a young woman many years his junior. Full of hope for the future, he returns to his Irish estate, Cashelmara, but in nineteenth-century Ireland—a country racked by poverty and famine—his family eventually becomes trapped in a sinister spiral of violence that Edward could never have foreseen. Cashelmara follows the fortunes of three generations as they struggle to survive both the tragedies of history and their own chaotic lives.

That's what the back cover copy says about the book, but it's so much more than that. I love big, rich, historical family sagas to begin with, and I love Howatch's style of writing. I love the way she works with point of view and how she manages to pull me into each of the characters' skins so completely that I'm rooting for them 100% -- until I'm suddenly not. Howatch is a true master of her craft. 

Some day when I grow up, I want to try my hand at writing something as rich and wonderful as a Susan Howatch book. 

Day 1 - The Best Book You Read Last Year

Or maybe I should say Entry 1 -- because if you've been around for a while you know that I'll get sidetracked and even if I didn't, I don't blog every day, and even if I did, I'd get sidetracked. See what I did there? Full circle. 

You also know that a few years ago I started, but never finished, a 30-Day Book Meme, so you're no doubt rolling your eyes and thinking, "What? Again??" 

Well, yes. Because I'm an author and I think about books .. a lot.  

So here goes: The best book I read last year. Would it surprise you to know that it was an older book? Or that it's a toss-up between two books? Or that both books are older books? Well, try not to be too surprised.  

I read quite a bit last year, but not as much as I could have. As I look back on my year of reading (thank you goodreads!) I realize that several of the books on my list from 2014 were books for young readers that I read along with my oldest granddaughter. We plowed through the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and knocked off several Judy Moody books, which added to my somewhat impressive list. 

I read several books that I already owned (including my two favorites) and several that I checked out from the library. I don't borrow books from friends because (a) I don't like to loan books to friends and (b) I've already proved that I can't be trusted to either read them in a timely manner or return them before the friend moves to parts unknown, or I move across country. (Yes, that is shame you hear.) 

I read several books for contests in which I acted as a judge. All of those books were newly published last year. Sadly, none of them qualifies as a favorite read. I won't discuss them here because that would be against the rules and unethical. 

So which two books did I read (or re-read) last year that qualify as my favorite?  

1.  The Rich are Different by Susan Howatch. 

You could substitute several books by Howatch here (Penmarric, Cashelmara, Sins of the Fathers) if I'd read them last year -- but I didn't, so this one wins. 

Dinah Slade was young enough to be Paul Van Zale's daughter. But she didn't care. She was a very ambitious and beautiful woman with her eye on Van Zale's tremendous fortune. However, she hadn't counted on falling in love. Paul found himself attracted to Dinah in a way he had long forgotten. Her vitality, her sensuality, consumed him. With her he could forget his past, his wife, his enemies, his empire....

If you like family sagas, the kind that were big in the 1980s, you'll love this book. If you prefer short reads, well, you'll want to give this one a miss. As for me, I'm sure I'll be reading it again. 

2. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer.  

Again, you could substitute a number of books by Mr. Archer here, and any one of them would do. This was the first book of his I read back in the day, however, and this one remains my favorite. 

Again, this one's a family saga full of all the stuff a family saga should have: love, hate, lust, greed, betrayal ... You know. All the good stuff. 

Born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world, both men are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. These two men -- ambitious, powerful, ruthless -- are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fuelled by their all-consuming hatred. Over 60 years and three generations, through war, marriage, fortune, and disaster, Kane and Abel battle for the success and triumph that only one man can have.

And yes, I'm sure I'll read this one again, too. 

What about you? What was the best book you read last year? 

How Did It Start?

For the past few days, I've been trying to figure out where my love of mysteries first began. Yeah, I know. Too much time on my hands. Except that's not entirely true. I don't have nearly enough time for everything I need to do, I'm just really good at procrastinating.

But I digress. . .

I can't remember how old I was when I read my first Nancy Drew mystery, but I know I was younger than 11. Much younger. I was still living in Montana then, and my mother signed my sister and me up for some Nancy Drew book club, which meant that two Nancy Drew mysteries were delivered to our front door every month (or something like that.) I remember sharing the books with my sister, but I don't remember how we decided who read what, and when. I'm guessing when I say that she read the books first and then passed them on to me, but it seems like a logical guess since she was three years older and, naturally, bossy.

At some point, my mother decided to sell off my Nancy Drew books (without even mentioning her evil plan to me) so she could buy the Hardy Boys series for my brother (who doesn't read and so never did appreciate the depth of my personal sacrifice.) I wish I could report that I'm so emotionally healthy that the loss of my beloved Nancy Drew books was merely a blip on the radar screen of my childhood, but I can't. I'm still miffed, but I feel a little better because my mother (perhaps recognizing the need to make serious amends) gave me the entire set of story books that she used to read to me from when I was very young.

My favorite story of all time, TOM TIT TOT, is in those books, and I clearly remember the delicious shivers that raced up my spine when I listened to that story. I wasn't much older when my grandmother gave me a Readers Digest condensed version of Victoria Holt's MISTRESS OF MELLYN to read during a family camping trip. I might have been 12 or 13, but I might have been 10 or 11.

What I do remember is sitting in the shade for days, enjoying those familiar delicious shivers as I read. After working through every Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney gothic I could get my hands on, I discovered Agatha Christie, and spent the next few years reading British mysteries, almost exclusively. In my head, a mystery wasn't a mystery unless it was a cozy set in a small English village.

 I can't remember when I finally began accepting Settings Other Than British and Mysteries Other Than Cozy into the fold, but at some point variety became the key to my reading experience. I read everything and everyone, but rarely do I read two books by the same author, or two books from the same genre or subgenre in a row. But that's just how things stand now. My reading habits will probably change again one of these days. Seems that the only thing that doesn't change is the fact that things are always changing