My parents moved into a house in Seattle when I was just a few months old and my mother still lives there today. That's 57 years that a little grey house (well, its tan now but because my father put aluminium siding on it a few years ago but it was always grey when I lived there) on a hill has been the family home. My little brother was born in that house and my father died in that house. I don't feel especially attached to the house. I don't feel especially attached to Seattle as a city, and the longer I live outside of it, the less I long for it. I do, however, feel very attached to several people who live there. My son and his family, my brother, my mother and two very special girlfriends that I have had the privileged of knowing and loving for over 40 years. I see them every year or so when I visit Seattle and we exchange emails and skype calls occasionally. As soon as I see them it is like no time has passed between cups of coffee and visits to the New Orleans Bar to hear excellent jazz. I love their children and they love mine. I love their partners, one of whom I have known just as long because they were high school sweethearts. I love their pets and they always ask about mine. I love their homes and I am always welcome in them.
One of these girls – MM – is a very smart professional executive vice president in a financial business. I don't pretend to understand what she does but I know you have to be highly intelligent to do it. She is very interested in politics and knows all the players in the US government. I watched the last State of the Union speech at her house and she knew all the faces and had something to say about each one. Her hobby is keeping an eye on the way the country is run.
She is a great mom and is incredibly generous. She tutored a young girl for years and went miles out her way for her. She looks after her mother-in-law who is not well and shares her life with her family completely. She is very funny and laughs a lot. I bet you want me to introduce you to her now, don't you. She is genuinely everything I have just described.
One of the ways I connect to people is through books and reading. Whenever I talk to a friend I haven't seen for a while I always ask what they are reading. My mom and I often end a conversation with what she has been reading. When I meet someone new and the conversation lags I can always ask if they have read anything interesting lately.
When I visit MM I ask what she has been reading and usually she bring out some books for me to pack in my suitcase to bring home. I like to read the books she reads as it feels like it keeps me in touch with her even though we live far apart. This smart professional VP reads books that I wouldn't pick up on my own in a million years. Well, that may be exaggerating a little. I might pick them up but I would probably just as quickly put them down again.
A few years ago she gave me all of Diana Gabaldon's books. These are big fat historical romances. I have read one – the first one – Outlander and part of the second one – Dragon Fly in Amber but that is as far as I have gotten. I don't hate them at all, I just always find something else a little more interesting to read. I don't like the physical book as it is hard to hold in bed. The cover is soft and the book is big so it flops around a lot. It is a better sitting-up read. MM loves them.
The next year it was all Harry Potter. The year after that she was into the Twilight Series (really!) This past visit she gave me the first three Michael Scott books – The Alchemyst, The Magician and The Soceress. Michael Scott is an Irish Fantasy writer who is into mythology and folk lore in a big and amusing way.
The books are centred around Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel who are immortal. The Flamel characters are based on real life people who lived in the 17th century. They find twins who they think can save humanity (the series all takes place in one week in modern day). There are other immortals that we have all heard of – Joan of Arc, Shakespeare and Billy the Kid. And there are mythological characters such as Prometheus and Gilgamesh. Oh, wait, maybe Gilgamesh was a real person too – I'll have to google him. They all go on some rollicking adventures and get into a lot of trouble with Elders, Shadowlands, monsters and such. These a books written for children, I think. But I know a few adults who have read them and loved them.
I just finished The Necromancer. It's more of the same and if you like these books you'll like this one too. I have been sucked into the story. I have to find out how it all ends. There is at least one more book after this – The Warlock – and I will read that one too.
These aren't books that I would normally read. But these are the type of books MM reads and if she suggests them or gives them to me then I will read them. I love the fact that I have read the same books as her. It makes me feel closer and we are so very far away from each other, geographically anyway. I just realised that I never suggest books for her to read. MM wants books that entertain her but don't tax her. She wants books that are easy to read, easy to put down, easy to pick back up again, and easy to fall asleep to. She wants books that let her forget that she is smart and has an incredible brain. She wants books that take her to another world. She wants a book that will totally carry her off and let her block out everything happening around her at the time. She wants to not think – just to escape for a little while.
You won't learn anything by reading Michael Scott. It won't enrich your life or make you think deep thoughts. He writing won't beguile you and his plot lines won't mystify. (He does know how to leave a plot dangling though.) But you will escape for a while if you read his books and have a little fun doing it.
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