While I was dusting the book shelves (which I do once in a while! - whether they need it or not!) I ran across two books that I often reread and pulled them out to reread again!! I love both of them and highly recommend them.
“…And Ladies of the Club” by Helen Hooven Santmyer was recommended to me by a very dear friend, Beth in 1980 something! It was first published in 1982 and spans from 1868 to 1932. The author, Santmyer was 88 when her book was published.
The book tells the lifetimes of two women in a small Ohio town and the other members of the Waynesboro Ladies Literary Society. One time, when I hadn’t read it in years, I picked it up and thought, “I wonder if it’s as good as I think it was.” I reread it – and it was! I could never get my book club to read it because the size was too daunting for a couple of them.
This hardback is a copy I found at an estate sale and I replaced my paperback with it. It’s a thick book so you have to commit to it! Every once in a while I want to pick up a book that will take me awhile to read. – you know, a thick one! And this one is that.
The next one, “The Ladies of Missalonghi” by Colleen McCullough is one of my favorites.
This book is very thin!! It was published in 1987. McCullough is also the author of “The Thorn Birds” – which I admit, I have never read.
“The Ladies of Missalonghi” is set before World War 1 in Sydney, Australia.
From the cover flap:
“Missy was a part of the Hurlingford clan and she was ‘manless’, she was bullied, pitied, exploited, patronized, and utterly unimportant in the clan’s scheme of things.
No sensible mentor would have dreamed of advising Missy to consult a wildly romantic novel for the answer to her plight. But luckily Missy’s mentor was a librarian with a taste for purple prose and a scandalous past, who understood that beneath Missy’s drab exterior there beat the heart of an enchanting and adventurous woman.”
This is a light hearted and warm book.
I enjoy old books. I enjoy new books. I just enjoy books!
