The Color Chartreuse, Etc., by Jane Hallock Combs

The Color Chartreuse, Etc by Jane Hallock Combs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who doesn't love reading about quirky family members? But then, most of us are related to quirky family members; that, or we are the quirky one, right?

The Color Chartreuse, Etc, by Jane Hallock Combs, is full of quirky family members. Many of the essays here were read on NPR station WKMS in Murray, Kentucky, as well as appearing in several newspapers.

Disclaimer time: I do appear several times in The Color Chartreuse, Etc, as Jane Hallock Combs was my mom. So, maybe I'm a little partial to many, if not most of the essays. I have a feeling, though, that even without that family link, I would laugh at many of these essays.

Why? you ask. Fair question.

Example: Cousins Anna Mae and Ezra, who, during WWII, held off a Nazi invasion with a baseball bat - when they weren't literally tearing their house apart; Greg, who didn't want the tooth fairy tip-toeing into his room to leave money for the tooth under his pillow, and sat in his bedroom doorway with a baseball bat to keep the tooth fairy out; Greg, who after breaking his leg, had a double-legged cast on, and, unable to help Mom at the laundromat, leaned out the Volkswagon's sun-roof, giving a passionate speech to passers-by about being "a poor little boy with a broken leg who just wanted to hep with the laundry!"; and more. There's the time the school bus went to take Mom to school, after her brother told her that the road being taken was the road to heaven...

If you want a good laugh, this is the place. The Color Chartreuse, Etc, by Jane Hallock Combs, has enough laughs to help you through the day.

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The Sewing Room: Uncommon Reflections on Live, Love and Work, by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

The Sewing Room: Uncommon Reflections on Life, Love and Work by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are books of essays that are dry and bordering on boring. Then there are books full of entertaining essays that leave the reader feeling like he or she has just had a visit with a beloved friend or a slightly older sibling. The Sewing Room: Uncommon Reflections on Life, Love and Work by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton definitely falls into the second category.

Barbara Cawthorne Crafton is an Episcopal priest, writer, and lecturer who has written several books on spirituality. Her book The Sewing Room: Uncommon Reflections on Life, Love and Work is full of essays written about her time as an active priest, the people she's met, ministered to, and loved over the years. While the essays tend to be short, we meet a wide range of people through them: seafarers, AIDS patients, the homeless, and others struggling with their daily lives, who still manage to maintain their humanity.

This version of the book (it originally came out in hardback) ends with an essay that brings us up to date on the people we met in the earlier essays, bringing us full-circle to our new acquaintances.

If you're looking for a book filled with satisfying essays, Barbara Cawthorne Crafton's The Sewing Room: Uncommon Reflections on Life, Love and Work should fit the bill nicely.

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Some Things You Just Have To Live With: Musings On Middle Age, by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

Some Things You Just Have To Live With: Musings On Middle Age by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Years ago, while wandering through the local library, I discovered The Sewing Room : Uncommon Reflections of Life, Love, and Work, by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton. I didn't read the book; I devoured it, and ended up buying a copy for myself.

Since this happy meeting, I've bought other books by Rev. Crafton, including Some Things You Just Have To Live With: Musings On Middle Age.

I just finished Some Things..., a slim volume of essays written by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, a retired Episcopal priest. The essays in this volume deal with the joys (and foibles) of middle age, describing the changes we go through during this time in our lives. Written in good spirits, with a touch of humor intact, Some Things You Just Have To Live With: Musings On Middle Age is a joy to read, especially by those of a certain age. I highly recommend this slim volume.

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Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen; 4 of 5 stars

Anna Quindlen has a knack for making the mundane interesting, letting the reader know that every day stuff is both universal yet individualistic. Her book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is no different. A former New York Times columnist, Quindlen has written essays here that explore different facets of women's lives.

In her essay Advice to My Younger Self, Quindlen writes, "It’s nothing short of astonishing, all that we learn between the time we are born and the time we die. Of course most of the learning takes place not in a classroom or a library, but in the laboratory of our own lives...[These lessons are] clear only in hindsight, frequently when some of its lessons may not even be useful anymore." That is how life is for all of us, yet it takes a true wordsmith to write this truth so succinctly.

While I've loved Quindlen's fiction since stumbling upon Black And Blue years ago, this was one of my first forays into her essays. As I read Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, I found myself occasionly thinking, "Yes! That's it exactly!" In her essay Faith, she mentions that when we're kids, days seem to fly by while the years crawl but that when we're older, it's the reverse: the days crawl by as the years fly. While I'd instinctively known this, I'd never given it much thought. For most of us over a certain age - well beyond our teens - all we have to do is look back over our lives to realize how true this is.

Well worth the read.

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