About Alice

So my last entry was May 3rd.  It is now May 21st.  One part of this challenge that I forgot to mention in my first entry is that I would like to get all of these books through the library.  Unfortunately we did not have this book at my branch so I had to wait three weeks to get it!  So, a 78 page book that I read in a day took three weeks to write about!  Instead I read the last two book in the Dexter series and they were awesome!! 
So, About Alice is a nonfiction book written by Calvin Trillin after his wife's death.  Calvin Trillin is a writer for The New Yorker as well as a novelist.  I wish I would have known who he was and had read at least one of his books before I read this.  At first I felt really disconnected from this book.  It just kind of started right in on her life and I felt like I needed more background before just jumping right in.  As I continued to read though I really felt the love of a man for his wife, the mother of his children and his best friend.  The pride he had in her talent, her work ethic, her beauty inside and out and her ability to mother his two daughters was amazing.  One of my favorite things about their relationship and their parenting views was this: "We agreed on a simple notion: your children are either the center of your life or they're not, the rest is commentary."  This was a major theme in her life and their relationship. 
Alice was an amazing person.  She had lung cancer in the seventies and had treatment that resulted in remission but ended up causing heart failure in the 2000's.  She never smoked a day in her life, in fact was very outspoken about her dislike for cigarettes.  Instead of having a bad outlook on this she felt that she was lucky after cancer to have twenty five more years with her family.  One of my favorite quotes in the book is this: "My doctor said that getting sick like that - getting a lung tumor when you haven't smoked and when you are way too young to get one - is like having a flower pot drop on your head while you are walking down the street," she wrote.  "It really isn't your fault, there isn't much you can do about it except try to get the flower pot off your head and go on walking."  This to me summed up her outlook on life.
By the end of the book I started to see why this is on the list.  Even a short book about an amazing life and an amazing relationship can inspire us all to be just a little better, try just a little bit harder.  At her memorial her daughter Sarah said: "Mom, I know you're listening somewhere, waiting patiently to hear me say these words: You were the coolest girl I ever knew."

So, on to the next book on the list.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.  I read this novel in junior high and know I liked it, but I don't remember much!  So I already have this book in hand because it was on our shelf.  Woo hoo!  On the first page of the inside cover: "NOTICE.  Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.  BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR Per G.G., Chief of Ordinance."  Gotta love Mr. Twain! 
 Now if I can keep my mind on Huck Finn and try to ignore the pile of books on my shelf that I want to read......Kinsey and Me is calling my name.......