Sunday, March 19, 2017

Mom, the lifelong reader


Working my way through many old photos of Mom...

I really love this one. She's holding a copy of Peter Rabbit and Other Stories. I believe this is the 1947 hardcover that was illustrated by Phoebe Erickson and published by Wonder Books.

Mom was an avid lifelong reader. One of her childhood favorites, Dangerous Island by Helen Mather-Smith Mindlin, became one of my childhood favorites. She also passed down to me her love of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books.

Just a tiny sampling of her favorite authors would include James Michener, Nevil Shute, Colleen McCullough and Stephen King. She enjoyed non-fiction narratives and diaries of ordinary women living through trying times.

The last books she read were Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times, by Lucy Lethbridge; The Foxfire Book, edited by Eliot Wigginton; and The President Is Dead!: The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond by Louis L. Picone.

The book she had most recently added to her Amazon wish list was When the Children Came Home: Stories of Wartime Evacuees by Julie Summers. I may read that one myself.

And just wait until I tell you about her cookbooks...