 Dads and Daughters and Books Today my sister, brother, niece and her husband, and I spent with my parents. It was a delightful day, chatting, lunch at a Thai restaurant whose owners adore my parents, and then back home to chat some more. The conversation eventually turned to books, and I commented on how the bookshelf that used to be between the front door and the floor to ceiling windows that span the front had been replaced by a cabinet on top of which sits the 50-inch flat screen television. I don’t regret it much as Dad doesn’t read any more, doesn’t even listen to audio books but does enjoy the news and shows, but I do miss seeing those overflowing shelves. When I got home late this afternoon, I began looking through my dad’s books. Y0u may remember that just over a year ago I wrote about the gift of his books that he gave me. I took home a lot of books that day not all of which have made it onto my shelves for lack of space. There are still four bags of books on the floor of my bedroom closet. The rest are scattered among my books because my initial thought—putting them all together on their own shelves—seemed wrong, a kind of segregation that didn’t honor him as much as I had hoped. Instead, I added them hither and thither, and now they sit comfortably among my books in the same way that the bookcase held some of everyone’s books mixed together. When I got home late this afternoon I was feeling both thankful to still have my parents around at age 87, and also nostalgic for that old bookcase and what it represented—the books he read to us, the books he was reading at the time, the books my mom loved to share with us. These memories came back to me today when after arriving home early in the evening I browsed my own shelves looking for Dad’s books. I stopped for a moment in front of each one I found, but when I came to The Onion Field and on the next shelf up The Bridge of San Luis Rey I stopped. These two are special because our reading tastes didn’t often merge, but these two books were ones we both loved. I have them next to me as I write this because it’s comforting. I feel as if Dad is in the room with me, reading in the overstuffed chair, stopping now and again to share a passage. The now-missing bookcase in their home that once held these two books, favorites of his, seems less important as a memory than does the books we shared—he reading mine, I reading his. I am glad that I have reached a point in my life where gifts are less important than memories.Upcoming Book Festivals and Fairs: Location: St. Paul, Minnesota Location: Portland, Oregon Location: Lansing, Michigan The Pub House: One of their novels is The Cezanne Chase,a thriller set in the world of international art and high-stakes murder. Two Cezanne portraits are defaced and the value of the remaining ones soar. New Scotland Yard is called in, and the investigation moves among St. Petersburg, New York City, London, Provence, Boston, and Paris, aboard yachts, inside auction houses, museums and mansions. (The paperback version has just been released.) Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is a biography of one of the film world’s earliest stars, a clown on the screen, a brilliant writer, gagman, director, actor, and prodigious acrobat during silent film’s Golden Age. It focuses on Keaton during his prime while on the screen and also on the ups and downs of his private life. For an unusual take on WWII history, A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato is told from two perspectives—that of the Japanese and the Americans. The largest battleship ever built left Japan in April of 1945 on a mission to engage in a suicide attack upon the Allied forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. It’s a powerful look at what could have been one of the premier events of the war had not the original plan failed. Imaging Books & Reading: Of Interest: Until next week, read well, read often and read on!
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