“UPLIFTING” Book

This week we are discussing books that we have wanted to read, but for some reason have never gotten to them.

WHERE DO I START?

Take one look at all of the books around my house and you will know that I could not have read all of them. Seriously, and I am a great reader, but there is an incredible number.

(Then look at my Kindle account!)

Not that all of these books are mine, though and yes, I have actually read quite a number of them.

This past June I posted a review of the book, “The Small Woman”, the Gladys Alyworth autobio  from which the  movie “Inn of the Sixth Happiness” was based. I love the movie, and always wanted to read the book. I was disappointed in it some ways, but FINALLY getting to read it after wanting to for at least 45 years was wonderful.

It seems that I may have mentioned  in the past that  I had read a great deal of Russian literature when I was a teen, with a particular liking for Tolstoy.

When I was a teen, I lived in a small town tucked away in one of the largest counties in the country, near one of the biggest cities in the country, and whoever was on the library board was put there for me. The library was just a couple of blocks from my house and I read a large number of books from there. I probably read all of their considerable collection of archaeology, (some of them surprisingly very amusing), and a great deal of literature.

The one book I would look at on the shelves and think, “OK, one day…” was Tolstoy’s “Resurrection”, (“uplifting”, get it?), but the thing was bigger than “War and Peace” and I simply was a kid in a candy store with that library. I mean, why blow so much time on that when I could get through many more books by many more writers and on many more subjects? I figured I would always be able to find it again.

I was wrong.

If a library has any Tolstoy now, it is bound to be just that miserable “Anna Karenina” and maybe a copy of “War and Peace”.  I know that I have said before that Tolstoy was pressured into writing “Anna” as a serial in a magazine simply for money. He’d throw out what he wrote and his daughter would get them from the trash pile and send them to the editor. He was old and sick and he should not have been writing; his family probably hastened his demise with this.

A few months ago, after years of looking on library shelves to no avail and only seeing copies out of my budget online, I found a free download of a digital version of “Resurrection”.

Now, to find the time to get to it.

With online books, with all of my friends’ and colleagues’ books, with all that I have and have downloaded, I am still that kid in the candystore, even though I pretty much OWN a candy store, (several thousand books).

I expect life to change again soon. Maybe the time will be found for this and so many others on my TBR list.

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